Art, Design and Architecture students like things to look nice. When the everyday blended learning solutions they are expected to use are perceived as lumbering ogres, ostracised from embedded use and banished to the hinterlands of cool, it is little wonder that attractive, usable and open online resources become the starlets that garner attention. However, as the boundaries of academic and personal use of technology become ever-more blurred, is there hope for an unlikely union between the two? This session will consider the influence of social media on perception and continued development of the institutional VLE.