Brick by Brick

The branding of HTML 5 is upon us. Logo designer Michael Nieling came up with an html 5 logo that someone inexplicably asked for. It also has its own website. Like your mom’s cat has his own Facebook page. The logo is good and it will work as a mark on any background, scaled as big or as small as you would need and looks great in black and white. The palette used is trendy and why not? HTML 6 is on the way, I suppose in some engineer’s nerd-dreams, nestled between Big Bang Theory Fan-fic and Olivia Munn. I especially like this logo for what it doesn’t try to do. It doesn’t attempt to speak to what html 5 promises for the future, or how it will transform the user experience, or any of that silliness. Just an orange shield with an S on it. I mean a 5. It’s a 5.

As always, what I really like about a big, goofy logo roll out is the marketing gibberish language that is attached to it. I remember Pepsi’s latest logo redesign came with a bewildering 15 page explanation of the process that was at once hilarious and yet totally acceptable. If you spend that amount of time and money, you need to show and tell. So, take a pull on this:

“It stands strong and true, resilient and universal as the markup you write. It shines as bright and as bold as the forward-thinking, dedicated web developers you are. It’s the standard’s standard, a pennant for progress. And it certainly doesn’t use tables for layout.”

I felt like Thor when I read that. Funny though, the developers I know would not be described as “shiny”. Our new developer’s shirt could be described that way, however. Clearly, this is tongue in cheek and whoever wrote it has a pretty good sense of the absurdity of these puffy, cringe-inducing logo mission statements as descriptions. At least I hope so.

The classes’ logos are a little less successful at least for me, but there is a definite cohesive suite here.

So there you have it. One big bold logo perfect for branding and a bunch of odd supporting logos that serve little purpose really. I give the whole set high marks and am a fan. Let us know what you think and feel free to send me a logo shirt (they actually sell for 22 bucks on the site). Ladies medium, thanks.

As a required companion piece to this post, I have grudgingly crafted a review of the 5 sites that are on the lower end of the design scale. Some of these campaigns have no budget, and others are just a few years behind the times. Some others are just lazy. Although none require any real commentary, I need to take up some space on this blog and I think you’ll agree that I’ve done just that.

Kevin Scott

“Congress is broken and we need to fix it”, states Kevin Scott. At least it says that on his campaign site. This is where I might make a broken site joke, high five Todd and call it a day. But I’d rather focus on the awesome stars and stripes bastardization and glimmering flash treatment that Team Scott chose to waste time on rather than put some actual content on this little gem.

(more…)

In putting together the report we released last week, The Use of the Internet by 2008 Senate Campaigns, my co-workers took the time to identify the websites of everyone running for the Senate this year.  Since my co-workers already did the hard part in finding the sites, I figured I’d cruise through the list and pick out my most and least favorites from a design perspective.    Presented below are the best designed homepages of the group, in my opinion.   I’ll write up the worst later in the week. 

(5) Mark Warner (D-VA)

There is no shame in coming in 5^th place. My father said that to me after a disappointing 11^th place finish in the Pinewood Derby.

Although there is a hint of Obama-borrowing here, I liked this site for its generous use of white space and logical placement of content/actions. The splash page sign-up is of course a real slap in the face but at least the skip through link is not hidden. My eye goes directly from the (only mildly annoying) logo to the contribute option to the actions. Everything on this homepage is easy to instantly recognize and quick to find (and then dismiss in my case).

(more…)

In my last post I made some remarks pertaining to the McCain campaign website team borrowing the tone of the Obama site. I thought it was a good upgrade to an already well designed site overall. When I popped over the McCain site today, however, I was surprised at the latest similarity. The backlit blue light that the Obama team uses on every page has now made its way to McCain’s latest promotion, McCain Nation, a grassroots event planning/searching tool.

When the Obama team first started using this illustration technique, I really liked it, and it’s been beautifully rendered. But they use it for every promo and now the crowd of wispy supporters that comes with it no longer look like race-less Americans supporting Barack Obama to me…they look like charging albinos. Or ghostly Skynyrd fans. They frighten me. Now the McCain gang wants to start in with the heavenly beams of light and surely the faceless zombies can’t be far behind.

(more…)

Tricked you with the headline up there, didn’t I? Yes I did. There’s nothing wrong with John McCain’s third redesign. It’s just bluer than before with more right angles and stars. It is a nice upgrade from the last version which was not so bad either. McCain’s team seems to have Obama-ed this version up just a bit with the blues, the positive tone, the structure …in fact, look at this (click on image to see full picture).

It’s not a direct rip off by any stretch, but the McCain design team has taken a look at the competition and let’s leave it at that. I would (and have) done the same. Or worse. Here are some first impressions on the latest effort:

The silver star logo remains the branding for McCain and that Republican sans serif font style is right there with it. They’ve now added the url below it to be helpful. Or forceful. Something.

Like most modern political sites, the main focus is on a centrally located media section. McCain’s site is no different and does a nice job of incorporating this into the design of the home page. The video that clearly needs to be pushed is a Four Year Vision piece that once clicked reveals a vision of 2013 where everything is squared away or something. The baritone voice-over made me sleepy but I was then revived by clicking on the colorful Cuban Independence link and asked to sign a petition, which I respectfully refused as I’m very busy today.

To the left of the big dance number is a rubic’s cube of banner ads that magically switch every 5 seconds, creating; 1) a cascading vertical selection of issues to click on and, 2) my left eye to twitch.

The right hand side is the usual Join the Team plea, but nicely and very cleanly laid out. The Action Items (I call them action items because I’m in the biz) below are pleasantly low key and not even numbered. When did that staple of political site design die out? Was I on vacation? It doesn’t matter, let’s move down to the sections no one reads, but everyone needs to put in their own site. News and Upcoming Events are given a lot of real estate and not gunked-up with any icons or thumbnails.

The page finishes nicely with some thumbnails of recent photos that expand smoothly within the browser window.

Overall a pretty decent overhaul. I appreciate that you can cruise through this site very quickly. Except for the crazy moving blocks on the left, the layout allows me to scan the page in seconds and decide where I want to go. This can’t be said of the last 2 McCain designs. On a side note I really enjoy the Parade of Stars background image they’ve chosen. I feel like Lou Rawls might be back there somewhere.