I recently had the displeasure of analyzing The George The Animal Steele Fan Page! Wow. Where do I begin with this one? As I scroll down the seemingly endless single-page website of amateurish design, I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or fall asleep. This site looks like a Microsoft Word-created nightmare of unorganized chaos. I think even George Steele fans would be outraged.
In this blog, I will analyze this website based on norms we expect websites to have—structure, readability, and high quality imagery.
Structure
When we visit a well-designed website, we quickly get a sense of its structure—both its visual layout and its informational hierarchy. With a strong visual layout, elements on the page are aligned according to an invisible grid; they are not arbitrarily placed. However, in the George Steele site, almost everything shares a left-alignment with no attention given to the rest of the page. It’s as if the designer hit “enter” after placing every image and piece of text on the page. Visitors also expect to see a menu bar either at the very top or along the side of the page, but that is clearly missing.
Informational hierarchy is tremendously lacking in this site. The absence of a menu is not only visually-confusing (as mentioned in the previous paragraph), but it also prevents us from understanding what topics and subtopics compose the site. Additionally, site visitors won’t see any headers on this George Steele page until almost at the very bottom! That is a problem. Headers are needed to help the reader know what the major topics are. They also aid in readability, which brings me to the next topic.
Readability
When proper headers are used to label paragraphs, readers are able to skim to sections of interest. In the George Steele site, you have to wade through title-less paragraphs to know what each is about. To add fuel to the annoying flame of this experience, many of these paragraphs are enormous! Well-designed sites use small paragraphs to make for an easier, more enjoyable reading experience. The large paragraphs on the George Steele site are tedious both in number of sentences and in line lengths that extend the entire width of the page!
Font choice is also an issue with this site. The serif font used appears to be Times New Roman which is stale and congested-looking. With innumerable other more unique fonts, this font is overused and boring. Its serifs make the lines of texts lack “breathing room” between them. Changing the font alone to a clean, sans serif font would go a long way in helping this site’s readability.
Imagery
Photographs and other types of imagery can make or break a website. In the George Steele site, they crush it—and not in a positive way. The photographs are terrible—many look like newspaper clippings. They are blurry, tiny, and uninteresting. They also are misaligned (which goes back to lack of a strong visual layout/structure). The row of cartoonish wrestle men near the top are cheesy and amateurish.
This site is jarring for so may reasons and a powerful reminder to make sound choices when writing and designing a website. Sometimes we don’t appreciate a well-designed website until we come across The George The Animal Steele Fan Page!