The new White House website echoes some of the same design traits that Obama’s campaign and transition sites. The new website is a huge design improvements from the previous site – which was text heavy and not very interactive.
(image from the guardian website)
The site features a prominent slider on the homepage and several features including some video. *gasp* theres even a blog!!! Will our new president continue to harness the power of the internet communicate with Americans?
The White House Website
As far as typefaces go the site does not seem to use Obama’s signature Gotham that was used on the campaign trail. The new white house site uses the beautiful but more traditional serif typefaces Whitney and Hoefler text.
Transition Website
Obama says the new site “will be a central part of his pledge to make his the most transparent and accountable administration in American history.” Hopefully this new push towards social media and interactivity is just the beginning. Hopefully this design change will be ushered into other governmental agency websites, forms, and ballots.
Barack Obama’s Campaign Website
What do you think?
Do you think Obama will bring out design changes? Leave a comment and let me know what you think!
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Yesterday Barack Obama was inaugurated as the the 44th president. Obama’s signature campaign slogan has been all about change – and change has been brought to the White House…website as of 12:01 pm yesterday.
The new White House website echoes some of the same design traits that Obama’s campaign and transition sites. The new website is a huge design improvements from the previous site – which was text heavy and not very interactive.
(image from the guardian website)
The site features a prominent slider on the homepage and several features including some video. *gasp* theres even a blog!!! Will our new president continue to harness the power of the internet communicate with Americans?
The White House Website
As far as typefaces go the site does not seem to use Obama’s signature Gotham that was used on the campaign trail. The new white house site uses the beautiful but more traditional serif typefaces Whitney and Hoefler text.
Transition Website
Obama says the new site “will be a central part of his pledge to make his the most transparent and accountable administration in American history.” Hopefully this new push towards social media and interactivity is just the beginning. Hopefully this design change will be ushered into other governmental agency websites, forms, and ballots.
Barack Obama’s Campaign Website
What do you think?
Do you think Obama will bring out design changes? Leave a comment and let me know what you think!
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14 Responses to “Change Has Come”
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January 21st, 2009 at 6:55 amChange Has Come | The Design O’Blog…
A look at the changing government websites with the new Obama administration….
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Chris says:
Good read. I don’t think Obama will bring about design changes though as his site didn’t present anything innovative. Granted it’s a first for a President, but it’s certainly not new.
I like the thought of a “peoples Government” having a “peoples website”. Both are interactive, welcoming, and fresh. And appropriate.
January 21st, 2009 at 5:43 am
Youssef Sarhan says:
hey
seems like a lot of posts are aimed at the new design, and rightly so. I’ve recently written a blog post on the design, checking out some of the features, typefaces, colours, grid, etc… you might like it!
http://www.whiteinkblog.com/2009/01/21/design-deconstructed-whitehouseorg/
Thanks.
January 21st, 2009 at 6:56 am
Brandon Cox says:
Most definitely. Obama’s team has already demonstrated some awesome design talent, a commitment to web standards, and a clear understanding of how to utilize social media to engage culture. I’m interested to see what else is yet to come.
January 21st, 2009 at 7:13 am
Tom Jimenez says:
President Obama has certainly brought good design to the forefront of society. Clean, effective, yet powerful design. It’s well thought of and a great design “campaign.”
January 21st, 2009 at 10:58 am
CreativeNotice says:
I agree, the new look is so refreshing. Anyone know if his design team is internal or hired out? I’d be interested to know who’s designing for the prez.
January 21st, 2009 at 11:10 am
Yael K. Miller says:
I really appreciate you pointed out specific design elements rather than just gushing about the redesign (which I’ve seen from other people lately).
I feel the picture in the center is too large and especially too large in proportion to the box next to it.
The site now comes across as a common magazine/news WordPress theme which I’m not sure is good or bad. Especially when there are designers who’ve done this better. For example, Brian Gardner and Nathan Rice to name two.
And yeah, the White House logo coming into the nav bar is some nice coding but I feel design-wise it’s intrusive — the little swirly-pointy- thing at the end feels very phallic to me.
There’s too much blue. I know you need a base color but still…too much.
Not a fan of the italicized lowercase pairing of words in the nav bar. Drop “the” from “Agenda” “Administration” and “Briefing Room.”
Wrapping up, not a fan.
Side note on a code issue. It has been reported that the robots being blocked have been dropped from 2400 to 1. A number of people have heralded this fact as proof of Obama’s openness. I find it just odd. Of course, whitehouse.gov is going to get spammed but apparently they don’t care enough to block spammers that could slow down the site.
January 21st, 2009 at 11:21 am
Liz says:
I think the design & online/social media marketing ive seen out of the obama camp has been awesome.
I wonder if this might spark a trend in local and federal level government agencies to pay greater attention to their websites and how users are able to interact with them?
January 21st, 2009 at 11:41 am
Tom Jimenez says:
This is a worth checking out as well, if any of you haven’t seen it. Some history of the Obama logo design.
http://www.vsapartners.com/news.asp
January 21st, 2009 at 11:56 am
Niki says:
@liz I hope it does spark a design movement in the government sector. Especially government forms and ballots. AIGA has a interesting article on redesigning the presidential election ballot: http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/design-for-democracy
January 21st, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Marvin says:
@Niki…I was reading your write-up here and the link over at Creattica and I too like the redesign over the old one. I too am curious if anyone knows if he hired an agency or have they hired a team directly?
January 21st, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Burt Reynolds says:
Of course none of this matters because he is an awful human being, that enjoys killing babies. I wonder where the money came from to design this site…oh that’s right, pat yourself on the back because you paid for it. Hope you get some use out of it…
January 22nd, 2009 at 8:15 am
Nikki - Logo Design Guru says:
I don’t think that obama will have much effect on design unless we get new obama logos to analyze or new websites. I sure do hope his “change” is in efforts to fix our miserable economy. We sure do need that. If that happens then it might change design in the way that more jobs would be offered and more designers can actually harness their talents and make a living. We shall see.
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:21 am