Bad Site, Good Site

For this second assignment, I searched for a bad website. One would think it wouldn’t be too hard to find a horribly designed website. That is of course, until you want to find a horribly designed website. Then, suddenly, they all look great.

That is until I had the pleasure of clicking on http://www.joelaratheplumber.com/. I warn you: It’s not pretty. Which, for the purposes of this assignment, is a good thing.

The color and layout are not consistent when you begin to navigate around. It almost looks as if 2 different people designed this site and they each went their own way. Sometime the navigation is on a red bar, and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes the background is a gold to white gradient, and sometimes it’s not. One consistency is that the text (no matter where it falls on the page) is always centered. Left justified for larger bodies of text would make it much easier to read and give it a better flow. The home page is such a clutter, that the eye doesn’t know where it is supposed to go. There are also WAY too many colors being used. It’s as if the page is screaming at you. It is uncomfortable on your eyes. The FYI aqua text box, is actually hiding other information. Hmmm…intended?

Not all is bad, though: when I click on links, they take me where I’ve asked to go.

As for the midterm redesign, Joe could use my help, but his site is only 6 pages. Therefore, I must keep looking. This task of finding bad sites is more challenging than anticipated. I realize that I don’t remember all the bad sites I have visited through the years. Probably, because I didn’t return to them after the first unfortunate experience. As of now, I have no ideas for my midterm assignment. I will keep looking.