The Design State

November 7, 2008 4:27 PM

The Design State
I started this site to cover specific topics of interest in public sector web design. My main focus will be government web design, since that’s my line of work, but there might be some useful stuff in here for non-profits and even private sector folks as well. I just started it yesterday, so there ain't a ton of content yet. If there are things you think I should write about, I'm happy to take suggestions.
posted by sciurus (2 comments total)

IANADesigner, but your use of bright white and bright red is really harsh on the eyes. Use a softer background color. Also, the spacing between words in the body text (the kerning, if that applies to words as well as letters) is a bit off-kilter [I'm on WinXP, FF3]. I'm not good enough to identify fonts by sight, but your choice looks a bit like Times New Roman or Calibri or something similarly uninspired. Your use of large, bold Arial headings adds to the harshness.

The background pattern is a nice touch, but it's too low-contrast to really make out, especially against the bright white of the text area. Your masthead is nice, though it's hard to make out the last letters of "design."

Gov't and nonprofit websites certainly do need design help, but you've got to prove that you should be the one giving it by showing off your own design skills. Keep working on it.
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 8:46 PM on November 7, 2008

Thanks for the feedback! It sounds like I need to add some consistency to the overall design. I've been trying to find a PC that I can use to review the way stuff looks; browsershots only helps so far. I am trying to make the text readable on the web, but also reminiscent of the printed page. I removed the word-spacing property for the time being in case it is doing something crazy in browsers I can't check.

I deliberately obscured the word "design" in the masthead with the "state" stamp as a [too?] subtle way of saying that bureaucracy often ends up obscuring design.

My main design goal here was to create a very simple and readable site.
posted by sciurus at 5:50 AM on November 8, 2008