A good website and a not-so-good website: I am in agreement with Curtis here that non-techies are in no position to judge, so I have decided to use the terms good and not-so-good, as opposed to good and bad (who am I to call a website bad, when I don’t know how to make one yet?)!

Good website: Collections at V&A: http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/index.html  (more on this in next blog)

Not-so-good website: Robert Opie Collection: http://www.robertopiecollection.com/Application/Corporate/museum2GB.asp

Let’s start with the not-so-good website; it is the site for what claims to be the world’s largest collection of British nostalgic goods and advertising memorabilia, and it covers ca. 1800 to present-day in the UK.  It certainly fits into my theme of Consumerism for my final project, and I’m sure the physical museum is quite charming; however, the website leaves much to be desired!  The entire website consists only of a homepage, plus these options: Add-to-Favourites | Tell a Friend | Contact Us | Trade & Business Customers, as well as a Shopping Cart to buy replicas.  There is also 1 page about Robert Opie himself.  But the entire website consists of only these pages!!!  It is a very tiny website, especially for a museum that claims to house half a million artifacts!!!  Let’s hope that more artifacts are added soon, other than the ones depicted in the odd mélange on the homepage.  So the website’s functions are very limited, almost anemic.

Speaking of aesthetics, or lack thereof, the tiny site is chock full of garish colors.  Most pages consist of a sickly off-beige background with black text and hideous green headers dividing the page horizontally.  The Robert Opie Logo itself consists mostly of red and green, with some black and beige, thus the pages’ colors mimic those of the atrocious logo—I hope they didn’t pay an advertizing and marketing firm for that one—let’s assume that a staff member’s friend came up with the logo on a strict deadline, and just threw together random colors in order to meet the deadline…….The only images on the site other than the logo are photos of British consumer goods and memorabilia, and not surprisingly considering the record so far, whoever selected the goods choose items in all manner of clashing colors, creating a visual cacophony on the page!  This is complete visual chaos.  Just look how bad the sign is for the Museum itself;

Robert Opie Museum Sign, London

In sum, both the function and the design of this Robert Opie Museum website are appalling!

Holly