Simplicity, in Practice is Hard
I was trolling my old links and I came across this post from iA last year that has a new relevance since my company is going to undertake the revamping of it's institution website this year. The current website is a messy behemoth, with subsites living on the same URL with completely different branding and running on a template and architecture that was built in 2001. In internet years, that might as well be the Bronze Age.
In starting to think about the new architecture and the types of needs that the many different programs at IIE need, I go back to the tug of too many audiences to please. On the current site, we are over loaded with copy that no one reads. It is always taken from the print bloated Annual Report. I would love to get the PR team here to think more about the online branding a part of the core identity of the organization and not a superfluous accessory. After, all the the website gets upwards of 400,000 hits a month. This is no small amount.
"Simple websites are easy to use, easy to understand, nice to look at. In practice, websites are either unusable or ugly and in general filled with too many complicated words. Why do designers have such a hard time to keep it simple?"
Read the post by Oliver Reichenstein, Simple Is Best
2 comments:
It's interesting you post this. This morning at work, we were discussing websites briefly, which led to me thinking for the 30th time this week on redesigning my website.
I'm particularly finding it tough to figure out the orginization and feel i want to go for this time around. Le sigh. if anyone has suggestions, let me know.
But cool post :) and good luck with your pursuit to shed light on PR, keeep us posted. literally.
I was thinking of reworking my website as well. It's a hard thing, wanting it to look amazing design wise, yet making navigation simple enough that people don't get confused looking around the site.
I find it funny how we all change our websites at around the same time lol.
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