Bum's Bluff

Showing one's colors

Grumps got me to thinking about political aesthetics. Wally Fellows flood of orange and blue will either be a genius form of instant name recognition or lead to voter revulsion. I'm undecided which as even though the colors are, excuse me, butt ugly; they certainly demand attention. Assuming Janis Ringhand sticks with the baby-blue and white, she may be hidden from view in the sign wars.

Given this is a web medium, I thought it prudent to look at the respective websites.

Janis' is a pleasing baby-blue and white color scheme. Unfortunately, that's where the pleasant viewing ends. Someone talked her (or her webmaster) into frames. So no matter what page you click to, her 1/3 screen banner covers the top. Although this keeps the name up top and adds to recognition, if someone goes to a political site, they likely know the name already. Frames take away from the information being presented as you have to do alot more scrolling to read what would otherwise show on the full screen. The district information map, a wonderful inclusion, is a great example where on normal settings one needs to scroll to see the full map.

Frames also hide the webpage specifics from the address bar and printing frames-based webpages is a major pain. Good webbies don't do frames. ;)

Wally's site, while not as informative as Janis', has a simple easy to use format (once you get past the colors). Simple menu column to logical links. One thing that seems to be missing from it though -- I couldn't find from the site whether he was Republican, Democrat, Green, Alien, or what party. From the articles he has posted in Press Releases (good page, btw), one can decipher that he is a Dem. But without already knowing or researching deep, one wouldn't know. Not sure how that is viewed by the party -- not that the Dems of Rock County have much web savvy.

posted by Walton @ 7:24 AM