Design: The Good, the Bad and the downright Ugly!

I have selected the Real History Archives as my example of a poorly designed website. See the site itself at http://www.webcom.com/~lpease/index2.htm and my full critique of it at http://mason.gmu.edu/~rmellen/baddesign.html.

The layout and even the URLdoes not make too much sense to the visitor. The style is something of a mishmash. The font styles are all over the place with no consistency.
The background colors and image make it tough to read and the spacing between sections is confusing. While the navigation is relatively clear, there is no clear focus, no place the design tells you to start, and at the bottom, the links are broken.

Please go to http://mason.gmu.edu/~rmellen/baddesign.html for my full review.

For a good design example, please see my review of the “Interactive Museum of News” the Newseum's website at http://mason.gmu.edu/~rmellen/gooddesign.html.

This is a somewhat non-traditional, new redesign of their site, and while I personally do not like the visual effect, I believe it is effective. The entire front page almost fits on my screen, with only the bottom objects missing. The dark blue background, while a bit unusual and not conducive to reading lots of text, does have a good contrast with the white text, leaving that readable in small doses.

The upper navigation bars are very strange, but they work! They are images, or cartoons, which represent the online exhibits.
As they are small, they do not adequately tell you enough about what they represent, but as your mouse hovers over them, a larger image, with a title, appears over the larger picture of the new Newseum building above. It is a successful navigation device.

For the complete review, please go to http://mason.gmu.edu/~rmellen/gooddesign.html