Senior busy with Web design

Steven Morgan Friedman admits that he does not get much sleep. Then again, he has good reason for it, since he is one of the University's most prolific Web site designers, having created homepages for the University Archives, the History Department and the 21st Century Project. The College senior -- a History and English major -- has also created nationally publicized pages such as a cliche finder, an inflation calculator and an Albert Einstein site. His work has been featured on CNN and in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Friedman's most recent project is a tour of Penn in French located on the French Institute for Culture and Technology of the University of Pennsylvania's Web site. The French Institute is a School of Arts and Sciences research institute that seeks to foster ties among Penn, the Delaware Valley region and French-speaking countries around the world. The tour, entirely in French, explains the educational opportunities offered at Penn to French speakers and offers links to relevant Penn sites in English. In line with Friedman's "elegant and classy" philosophy of Web design, the page contains much white -- or blank -- space in an effort to make the site less cluttered and more aesthetically pleasing. "Penn is truly a more outward-looking university," Friedman said, explaining that Penn is the only American university to his knowledge to have a site with a French tour. He explained that since Penn touts itself as an international university, its Web sites should be accessible to non-English speakers. Friedman said he hopes that the University will someday have the essential components of its Web site in more than one language -- with links to each language at the bottom of each page -- as is often done with international Web sites. Friedman also produces an e-mail newsletter for the Institute, which is headquartered in Lauder-Fischer Hall. The online tour project began when Friedman suggested that the organization could benefit from a Web site. Shortly thereafter, the Institute asked Friedman to design the page himself. Friedman initiated most of his Web page projects, including the University Archives Web site, in a similar fashion. Friedman created a tour of Penn circa 1830 for the Archives site. Friedman initially became interested in the University Archives as a sophomore. Then a second-year resident of Hill House, he went to the Archives to learn more about the college house's namesake, Robert Hill. Because of his work on Penn's Web site, Friedman took a job last summer creating a similar site for the University of California at Berkeley. Not surprisingly, Friedman's interest in designing Web sites has spilled over to his academic pursuits. One of his honors theses will argue that "online and traditional discourse are fundamentally different."