Did you ever know that pages could talk? The say, "Look at me, look at me," and they say this for a reason. In a world full of visual and auditory extravagance, one might be surprised at how much time and effort goes into making something look "professional." What is "professional?" Is it graphic designers who spend countless hours blending, rotating, coloring, and layering all for the sake of grabbing your attention? After all they do make their living by attracting people to their work. A graphic designer's repertoire is comprised mainly of format and organization. With these two elements and a designer's own "little bag of tricks," one can mold two-dimensional excellence.
While both of these go hand in hand, format is focused more on the look of each individual piece of the puzzle. Formatting is comprised of illustrations, fonts, buttons, etc. Ultimately anything that you see on the Web page has been formatted at sometime or another. Illustrations are an enormous part of a Web page's overall look. Much like the opening line of an intro is a "hook," illustrations are "visual hooks" for a Web page. On the other hand, we have organization, which is basically how all these pieces are arranged to make up the overall puzzle. Without organization, everything would look sloppy and most definitely not "professional." With all this in mind, we are ready to analyze our Web pages.
The University of Minnesota's Web page is not too bad. They use a column down the left side with a drop shadow to set page apart from the background. A nice little graphic is added to take away some of the boring "text feel." Too much text is a little overwhelming. The placement of the mission statement is clear and right at the top of the page, ready and waiting for someone to read. Morehouse College has too much text, much like the "text feel" of the other page. The only graphic on the site is the roof of a campus building.
