Posted by Archa
Posted on 01-23-2009 under Branding, Design

January 20th marked an exciting day for many people in this country. The swearing in of a new president who will bring change and hopefully, change the world view of the U.S.  President Obama’s message was change. From his cabinet, the political process, the way this current office is making it easier fo the average citizen to be involved with their government and most importantly, the official White House website (okay, I know it was a little over dramatic, but I had to tie it in to web design somehow). When landing on the front page of  Whitehouse.gov, I couldn’t help but notice how nice and clean the website looked. You can tell the new presidency is up to date with their standards.

The homepage isn’t cluttered with links of information, which made it easy for me to navigate and find what I was looking for. The most important information one wants to know is right there in plain view, and that for me is the agenda of this current office. Economy, energy and the environment being the two subtitles under the main header Agenda.

The blog is off to the left, so a person can follow along with the latest post. What I find really cool is the side bar when going through the subpages of the site. You can click on the slide show and learn about the previous presidents of the United States or the White House 101 button that will take the user to a page with sections about the history of the White House, fun facts, and first pets of the White House. I can’t help think that this current office wants people to know more about their own government. I just spent like 5 minutes looking at the fact section and finding out that President John F. Kennedy won a Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for his collection of essays, titled Profiles in Courage.

Overall the new website for the White House is a nice change indeed. It’s a very similiar feel to the design of  Obama and Biden’s campaign site. The site is clean, simple, and subtle. Information flow is not overwhelming and categorized properly. There are breadcrumbs to know where exactly you are on the site. I also like the nice use of gradients, which has the tendency to be overused these days.  Change indeed…