Sorry for being harsh in this mail, but I feel like I need to be very
clear on this in order to get across of what I feel about the new
design.
I would love to read some feedback from other designers on this. If I'm
the only one having issues with some aspects of the new FSFE web design,
then it might be in fact the best to just ignore my ranting, but if I'm
not the only one, we should do something to improve it. (I would be glad
to help improving things. In my opinion there isn't much to do to get
much better results.)
I'm very, very unhappy with the fellowship-logo-structured background.
Because of it it's nearly unbearable to me to visit the new web page.
This might be hard to understand for most people, but as a graphic
designer such things are very important to me.
There is no good reason to use such a clear big structure behind the
menu text. It's just in the way. As well the logo looks completely lost,
because it sits just somewhere. I assume the person positioning it
wanted to have it somewhere up on the left side and with enough space
around. The problem with this is, that it's position should at least in
any direction correspond to the positioning of other elements. At the
moment its just thrown in without any consideration of correlation. (I
know technically this isn't exactly true since it's bottom-aligned with
the menu, but optically this isn't the case since the background of menu
elements is only displayed on mouse over.)
Yes there are large pics on the front page. But this is by far not
enough if you consider, that normally people just surf on sub pages when
they read any content. And I assume we want people to enjoy reading on
our page. The texts are easy to read. That's generally good, but they
should appear clearly structured with an understandable concept as well.
If the only thing users get to see is just text pages they should be
designed excellent. Otherwise I very much doubt reading them is very
tempting. At the moment the start page is the worst since the text there
looks completely chaotic. Different font variations, sizes and line
spaces.
If elements should look different for good reasons, they need to be
clearly different in order to do not look chaotic.
"Free Software, Free Society!" is a great claim but design wise it's
just in the way - at least if the image slider is directly underneath
it.
The only ok image of three slider images on the home page, which I would
consider using as a display image, is the ilovefs image. And even that
could be much improved by adjusting colours and contrasts. The other two
images just look like they have been done by an amateur. They might be
ok for a private page, but not for an international organisation the
representatives of the European parliament should take serious. The same
is valid for the background with the grey fellowship logos. And I
believe we want the FSFE web page to transport a professional look and
feel.
The testimonials are a pain as well since I found no way of stopping or
going back if I didn't have enough time to read the sometimes quite long
texts.
The many little imperfections like missing alignment or random spaces
between elements destroy the beauty of the whole design concept which I
generally find very well done.
For example: Even if there is a logical/technical reason why the press
page has not the same margins than the other main pages from the menu:
this is not at all obvious to the visitor. There is just no
understandable reason for one page being different suddenly.
It's nice to have at least the decoration of the green waves, but they
should never get in the way of the text or looking like fighting against
it because they are too close to it...
So I hope who ever involved in the rebuild of the web page doesn't feel
attacked by my criticism personally. I'm sure the rebuilding process was
a huge amount of work and a big step forward concerning many practical
reasons. Even if I prefer the old design for aesthetic reasons I do
understand, that a mobile friendly solution is important.
I just think we can do much better with a little more love to details
and consideration of usability.
Best regards,
Franz
