Children's Resource Group

That’s what I get for posting quickly right before I leave for lunch… It’s fixed now.

Very great work. Love the variations in strong solid colors.

mrod

A very clean and simple layout. Love the rounding of the corners going on almost everywhere. Gives the site a friendly touch. Nice job, Steve.

GeertDD

So simple and yet so nice. It truly is a fantastic design.

The only thing I have to nitpick on is the bullets. They almost look like buttons. They’re almost too prominent compared to how subdued everything else on the page is.

Everything else is spot-on perfect.

Jonathan Snook

solid work my friend. It looks like I did it. I really should stop coming around here. your work is pawning off on me.

Dustin Diaz

I think the site looks nice, if you consider it as a visual expression.

But if you consider it as a communications vehicle for an organization, I think the site design is bad.

Elling

February 23rd, 2005

Elling, what is it that you find diffucult? I am interested to hear how you think the design could improve.

I think my main gripe is that you’re wasting the main focus area of the front page to show a slideshow. That I think is some kind of a mistake.

A better use of the main focus area would be to use it to show news within the organization, changes in schedules or other kind of updates. You know, the kind of things that people look for when they check back on a site. If the main focus area is used to show a static slide show it automatically gives revisiting users the impression of “nothing new here”, and that’s not a good thing when it comes to attracting users, I think.

So… my feeling upon visiting the site is that the designer(s) have had too much focus on visual design and too little focus on communication.

I think visual design is very important… but I also think it is important to remember that visual design is MAINLY a vehicle to facilitate better communication of whatever it is that you’re trying to get across. “Design” on it’s own kind of has no value, if you see what i mean…

Anyway, that’s about what I thought when I checked in on the site.

(Another thing is that there’s a couple of alignment problems when viewing the design in FireFox. The whole design kind of moves a little bit sideways when you navigate between the different pages.)

Elling

Interactive media is all about content, but it is also about evoking a response. In order to illicit action, you often need to add emotion. If a web design is only about content, the design simply becomes a wrapper, the tinfoil your burrito comes in. But design and marketing is so much more than just providing information.

The target audience for this site is parents of young children, and this audience will be able to connect with the photos presented on the home page. It evokes emotion. Connecting with your audience in this manner is proven to increase response quantity as well as quality. I, and CRG, felt that this real estate could, and should, be used for this type of communication.

About the shifting in firefox, that is caused by the scollbar being added on pages long enough to need it. Most browsers does not include the scrollbar on pages that fit into the browser window, but add it when needed.

“But design and marketing is so much more than just providing information.”

It’s about more than providing information… but if you think closely about it, all the different elements of marketing and design are about getting the message across in a clear and understandable way.

You start out with a message, and you try to get it across. That’s the mission.

When it comes to this CRG site, I can see that creating sympathy and emotions might be a big part of the message they want to get across. But is it the main function of the web site? I doubt that it is… and that’s why I think it’s a mistake to give it the kind of prime time that it gets on the site’s front page.

About FireFox: Yeah…. I see it now. You’re right. It’s because of the scrollbars. Still a bit annoying, though…

Elling

Elling: Take a stroll down your local magazine rack. Are those covers filled with tables-of-contents? With large blocks of text? Schedules? Nope. They’re all using big, attractive images to attract you as a reader… to make you find out what’s inside. It’s proven to work. That’s the feel we were going for. You can’t put the whole book on the cover. Nor should you.