Red Vs Blue – Round 1
This post is part of a series – read all the Red Vs Blue articles here
The recent Labour spoof of Cameron on their website aroused my curiosity. It has been a long time since I had a look at either parties website. Political design is always interesting as it has to be so much so so many people. It has to entice new supporters, retain current ones, portray an every changing way the party wishes to be perceived and the values they represent, to convey a lot of information to those who understand the jargon of politics and want in-depth knowledge and also to those who care very little or have very little political understanding… it is a pretty tough brief to meet and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
So I had a more in depth look at the Labour site and had a look at the Conservative equivalent as well – to see how they are both approaching the medium.
Round 1: The front page
In the red corner:
Overall I prefer the Labour branding of the two – there rose is a classic but also very contemporary in its current form – it has a sense of being a longstanding party who changes with the times inherit within it. The logo’s graphic element also lends itself very well as a brand in itself with or without the accompanying text – which is always the sign of a great logo. I don’t see the Conservatives new tree ever achieving that status.
The general layout and design is really clean and nice. It has a web 2.0 social networking site feel. This makes it look clearly aimed at not only appealing to a younger audience, but utilising the fashion for big shiny icons and clear buttons to make the site easy to navigate even for the most un-web savvy user as well. it is a nice balance really. I also liked the nice detailing in the background behind the site which adds some texture to the design without making it look cluttered.
Content wise – they are mainly directing visitors to the aforementioned Cameron spoof webchat page. I don’t think this really helps, as their picture (although funny) does make the site look a bit too juvenile. The animation picturing ‘real British people’ seem a little obvious but non-offensive. The rest of the content wasn’t really awe inspiring and apart from clicking the side icons and webchat link the rest of the page didn’t really have strong enough call to actions. Perhaps the other content could have been condensed to news and article headlines and links making the overall design much tighter.
And in the blue corner:
I really took a dislike to the new Conservative branding – It’s a tree… I do get it, strong roots and foundations, growing, natural and green and all that goes with it… but it is just too obvious, verging on patronising. Really I am not going to be fooled by a tree into thinking this is a party who embodies all those principles. It’s as transparent as ‘New Labour’. I see a nicely executed ‘design by committee’ logo here, and I don’t think it does anything for them.
The site layout is again, clean and fresh. I do think the sky imagery and headline highlight style make the site look like a travel company. But The usage of space and light is refreshing and I can see why they have gone with this. Also, the background image and headline change with the news so this actually makes the front page very dynamic – I just happened to get my grabs when they had the generic sky image up.
The panel based layout works really well. No cute icons here, but they make up for it with a clear navigation bar at the top and many more call to actions in the frequently updated content, which is grouped into sensible sections and including video and interactive elements. The content is much more engaging and appealing that the front page of the Labour site. The ‘join us’ and ‘keep up to date’ panels are perhaps trying too hard – I think the illustrative style, while nice, clean and breezy, would be more suited to a dating or social networking site than here, they might have been better as typographic treatments more in line with the ‘Now for change’ message.
I would like to say there are no cheap potshots at Labour on the site, which would make the party look more grown up than the opposition – but since I took my grabs, there are, big potshots, right across the front page… But that is the nature of politics and political marketing machines have always used such tactics.
The verdict? Labour wins on brand and style – but loose out on content and are less engaging. Since content and messaging are key here – that means they loose overall on the front page war even though their site is slicker and prettier…
Up next time – Policy Pages…
Links:
http://www.conservatives.com/
http://www.labour.org.uk/home
Related Posts:
This post is part of a series – read all the Red Vs Blue articles here
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