October 04, 2004

Good, Bad, Ugly

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:

Good web design and structure: California Historical Society
• good organization
• good color contrast
• animations (multi-media) not distracting
• continuity in header navigation
• hierarchical sidebar navigation
• links well highlighted
• good quality/fast loading images (small, medium, and large)
• stylistic/historical look and feel

Bad web design and structure: The History Guy …or… The Bad Design Guy
• distracting animated GIFs
• needlessly long pages
• absolutely no design or navigation continuity between pages
• bulky headers and footers
• unnecessary and poor-quality images
• badly organized structure
• dysfunctional navigation

Good design principles:
1) intuitive and consistent organization and navigation
2) high quality, fast loading, and relevant graphics
3) pleasant color contrast

Posted by Jim at October 4, 2004 08:27 PM