Campaign Site Design Review: John Edwards
Part 2 of my presidential campaign site review series (Hillary was the first) finds us staring into the guts of the Edwards effort. We have clicked through the initial splash page, dodging the listserv sign-up and chose instead to enter the site.
I’m puzzled at the lack of photography on the main page. No John Edwards picture to be found. He’s the pretty boy of the group, and he is notoriously absent. Because of that, my eyes go first, to:
The logo.
Using what has recently been a Republican treatment, the font is sans serif and devoid of anything cute. Wait. Is that swinging star followed by a green trail? I get it. Green means environmental. And the star means…fancy. Even with the unnecessary mark, I like the logo as it works well within this site and has a contemporary feel. It also does not rely on any ponderous emblems or flags (looking at the giant O in the striped farmland, senator…).
The structure of the page is solid, but I am not really pulled in any direction. The big pull here should be the Universal Health Care plan, I’m assuming, but because the palette of the site is very closely adhered to, I pass by the big title image and move horizontally to the right-hand navigation. I do like the way these elements are put together though. Each action item (sorry) is given enough real estate to be seen and considered. The design style/font choice/minimal drop-shadow works well here. I was compelled to click on the One Corps logo thinking it was some type of Marine Corps charity/information. It wasn’t, and it locked up my browser.
The universal navigation across the top of the page is also a little buggy in IE7, but the drop-down menus are succinct and very easy to read and navigate.
Below the fold contents include his latest video, some platform issues highlighted, blog headlines, press headlines, testimonials and quite a few social networking options.
Whether or not users will scroll that deep on the home page is a concern, and I think the design has crammed as much as possible into this first page.
Click on the screen image below and rollover the numbers for further comments.
Campaign Site Design Review: Hillary for President
Part one of my review of the top presidential campaign sites starts with Hillary Clinton's (exploratory committee) site .
As I've mentioned in a past post, this site impresses me with its lack of fluff and solid design. The red, white and blue palette is toned down for a less giddy experience. The user's eye doesn't bounce around. It goes where it was intended to go: the logo to the video to the action center. It's also only as Web 2.0 as it has to be. The background and internal use of the gradient when applied judiciously is one of the appealing aspects of the 2.0 design mantra and works just fine here. No reflecting pool logos (author guilty as charged) are to be seen. The text contrast has been subdued for maximum readability. No high contrast or color/font choices to vibrate through. The Contribute button, although in stop-sign red, is placed between the Action Center and Featured Clips, halfway down the page. Not exactly screaming at users, which is a nice change of pace. You don't see it repeated in the milder universal navigation until you're already working through the site. The overall initial experience is refreshingly pleasant here and I am into the content quickly without having to click through any registrations or toil through a video or splash page. High marks.
Click on the screenshot below and then roll over the numbers on the various page elements to see comments.
2008 Presidential Sites: From a Designer’s Perspective
We’ve heard a lot so far about the 2008 presidential sites focused on Web features and content. What we haven’t really discussed yet is the look and feel of these sites. So here’s my take on the 2008 presidential sites…from a designer’s perspective.
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Mitt Romney, The Exploratory Committee 2008. Wow. Sounds impressive. Then in an even bigger font than that title I see “Get with Team Mitt” and I wonder what Mitt is implying. Team Romney would have worked better here. Mitt isn’t a name for a human. I had a dog named Mitt. He ate a can of Schlitz. The actual can. |
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Tommy 2008 – Huh? The pants? The Hilfiger guy who makes the pants? Oh, Tommy G. Thompson, former Governor of Wisconsin. Here’s my issue with the governor: When you hit 9, your mom switches your name from Tommy to Tom. Like mine did. The site could also be brightened up just a touch, Tommy. |
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Brownback For President – And he means it. Look! The White house is right there, top center near his name, before his own picture (where he uses the White house as a backdrop). Bold move, Senator. Also, most ridiculous use of the American flag so far. |
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Join Rudy 2008 – The title of his site is also an instruction to me! That’s time-saving! Simple design. No vertical scrolling. Not too bad, really. The American flag pin reminds us that he’s an American. |
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John McCain 2008, The Exploratory Committee – Black and white color scheme means he’s serious. Interesting metaphor, actually. I wonder if it’s intentional? Design is solid and about section contains a concise bio. Not too shabby. |
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U.S. Senator Barack Obama, Presidential Exploratory Committee – What’s left to say? This site has been poured over almost as much as… |
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Hillary for President – I love the over-the-top tagline…”Let the Conversation Begin”. You almost wince as you read it. Still, she has the best overall design, as usual. Plenty of opportunities/actions to choose from without overwhelming users. |
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John Edwards ’08 – He went with a splash page in order to capture your email before you even enter the site. Curious. Or brilliant. Or neither. |
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Chris Dodd for President – Decent design is flattened by DODD SQUAD logo (wincing here), and the Dodd Pod (wincing so hard now) playlist. |
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Mike Gravel for President 2008 – Well, look at you with your Photoshopped little bevels and Gaussian blurs and things. This design gets a B. If this were 1992. |
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Kucinich for President – This is a wild ride. The top 100 pixels of the site (some pretty valuable real estate) is just a weird flash animation that rolls slowly through some inspiring terms like “action” and “insight”. To be honest though, it does pull my attention away from the poorly laid-out content below. |
And the winner is:
Hillary, Edwards and McCain are well designed sites. Obama is fine, but a little heavy on the video. My personal favorite is Chris Dodd. He and I both enjoy Night Ranger. Go ahead, check his Dodd Pod.
Redesigning USA Today
As a designer, I’ve struggled as how to best contribute to our blog. Most web design articles speak to people who aren’t designers and tend to focus on the obvious. I don’t intend to add to that.
So I decided to attempt a redesign of the USA Today homepage as companion piece to our recommendations to the newspaper industry. Senior designer Jei Park and I sat down and figured if we’re going to talk the talk, we might as well start walking as well. A couple of notes:
(1) In putting this together, we included every element of the current USA Today site. We wanted to come up with something that could actually be implemented, not something so conceptual that it could never see the light of day. In other words, we didn’t take the easy way out.
(2) We chose USA Today because it is the most circulated paper in the country, and which has had the same design for a couple of years. The point is to show what we think these things should look like. As a designer, the last thing I’m interested in is criticizing the work of other designers. That isn’t the point here.
(3) We want to hear your thoughts. If you like it, say so. If you hate it, say so. If you have changes you’d like to see, say so. If you think we’ve missed something, say so. We intend to act on the feedback and come up with a revised version in the next few weeks that takes into account what you have to say. The goal of this is to start a conversation about what newspaper websites should look like.
The design process almost always happens behind closed doors. Let’s see what happens when we get lots of good feedback from cross section of smart people. Click here or on the image above to see the full view. You can read Todd’s explanation of the features presented here. Tell us what you think.
Web Design Matters.
The first ten years of the Internet are over. The web is no longer a new thing. It is an ingrained part of our lives.Studies show that users form their first impression about a website in 1/20th of a second. What are they going to think if that time is spent watching Flash animation load? Or watching a marquee slowly scroll through a list of headlines? Or searching for creatively placed navigation? They’ll think it’s time to visit another website.
As Internet users get more sophisticated and impatient, the need for designs that emphasize usability becomes paramount. Here are a dozen guidelines for web designers that we’ve developed over the years. We try to have these principles guide all of our design work.
1. Know your audience. Not only in the marketing sense. Know the technical boundaries you’re working within. The user experience for a high school math student in Jersey and a journalist in Zimbabwe are very different. Bear this in mind when making initial decisions.
2. Understand the purpose of the site. The client can lose sight of this, but the designer must not. If the site’s purpose is to raise funds, that component must be ever-present in the design. If the client decides to punch the site up for the sake of visual impact, this must be addressed immediately, before the project loses its focus.