The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Identifying Web Design Guidelines

Choose six sites from list below or of your own choosing. Spend time exploring what they have to offer and how they go about presenting it. Come up with a list of what you think makes for good and bad web design, as well as any examples of exceptions to these "rules". Try to identify why you find particular features useful or pleasing or annoying. Keep track of which features you see in various sites so that we can look at them as we discuss them in class.

  • Layout
  • Color
  • Styles
  • Backgrounds
  • Buttons, menus, & other imput features
  • Images
  • Text/Type
  • Navigation
  • Hierarchy/organization
  • Interactivity
  • Special features (Flash, animated gifs, sound, video, etc.)
  • Communication features (chat rooms, mailing lists, bulletin boards, etc.)
  • Etc.

The list below is a somewhat random collection culled from award-winning and award-losing contests, personal favorites, and design directories. It was compiled to help you see the broad range of design and HTML approaches out there on the web. Feel free to email me with more suggestions for the list.

Activism

Commerical

Design & Designers

Education & Science

Entertainment

Music & Audio

News, Zines, & Other Publications

Random

Web Logs/Blogs