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Manchester City Council

manchester.gov.uk

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Re: Manchester City Council

#141

Post by viame »

DigitalSea wrote: post #70

I applaud the change and thinking outside of the box, but the Manchester City Council website looks like a $45 Wordpress theme off of Themeforest. The slider appears to offer no value to the site other than taking up a massive amount of room without really justifying its existence. I'm not a designer, I'm a developer and I am struggling to understand the reasoning behind that slider. While I agree that the trendy loo…

I completely agree with this one. I do design and code and it really pisses me off how pages are designed (I design ugly websites, and pretty ones as well, but whoever I design for, it works).

Everything looks like a theme now-days, and oversized as well because it's responsive. Some stuff is just useless and every designer keeps saying ' less is more, less is more ' while designing stuff like this? Less IS more when you know how to use it, when to use it, and what it really means.

I would give this website 2/10 for their effort.

Re: Manchester City Council

#144

Post by antninja »

dan1234 wrote: post #28

I think I actually prefer http://www.gateshead.gov.uk , which is a lot less "in your face". If I go to a .gov.uk site it's because a need a specific piece of information, I don't need the design getting in the way.

Or http://europa.eu/index_en.htm which has a massive amount of informations. From a government, we expect transparency rather than design.

Re: Manchester City Council

#145

Post by nness »

Since this is a UK Government site, I think the Equality Act 2010 requires WCAG 2.0 AA compliance. As difficult as WCAG is, and I've yet to see a fully-passed implementation, the lack of no-JavaScript support probably means they haven't met the accessibility mark. All that aside, I actually like the design, seems they got their IA in order, with a good prioritisation of content.

Re: Manchester City Council

#148

Post by devolute »

dan1234 wrote: post #28

I think I actually prefer http://www.gateshead.gov.uk , which is a lot less "in your face". If I go to a .gov.uk site it's because a need a specific piece of information, I don't need the design getting in the way.

It feels like the Manchester one is a bit too 'old school' (i.e. maybe started in print) designer lead.

For example, rollover states are either missing, inverting to hard to read colors, or... weird. Who designs buttons without designing and testing rollover states?

Re: Manchester City Council

#149

Post by josefresco »

Maascamp wrote: post #126
josefresco wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Also, what is wrong with themes on themeforest? Many are built with great design in mind." That's the issue with cheap templates. They are designed and built by web people with no connection to your organization. You then buy this template and shoehorn your own content, and hopefully goals into a template without ever thinking about what your site should look or work like. Templates serve a purpose at the extreme lo…

When you start a Rails or Django project you're using a template. When you use Bootstrap you're using a template. When you use the business model canvass you're using a template. And forget cheap, those templates are free. People use templates in successful projects all the time. Don't generalize. I'm sure a lot of sites have found success in their niche using themeforest as well.

If you want to compare apples with apples then it would be better to compare Bootstrap or Rails with some of the "framework" themes (like Genesis) that exist for platforms like WordPress. They stop short of design and mostly provide the designer and developer with a common language.

A complete theme usually has a lot more than just tools, conventions and code examples. It's a complete design, and content implementation, all you have to do is stick in your logo and copy and you're done. Not exactly the same process as using a framework.

Although I also dislike frameworks (Bootstrap high on that list) for the same reasons (shoehorning is encouraged) I don't think it's an appropriate comparison.

Re: Manchester City Council

#150

Post by cLeEOGPw »

DigitalSea wrote: post #70

I applaud the change and thinking outside of the box, but the Manchester City Council website looks like a $45 Wordpress theme off of Themeforest. The slider appears to offer no value to the site other than taking up a massive amount of room without really justifying its existence. I'm not a designer, I'm a developer and I am struggling to understand the reasoning behind that slider. While I agree that the trendy loo…

Next thing you know it starts showing banners, pop-ups and sending you emails with the "tax offers".
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