Design Critique: Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art Web site is a portal into its various art and online exhibits, education and family programs. The Web site's function is simple: to inform and to entice visitors into exploring the New York-based museum’s offerings.

The designers aim to serve the informational needs of potential patrons on the home page by using a four-column grid to organize nearly 60 links. The main page manages to fill about 80 percent of an 800x600 pixel screen with the main visual elements near top half of the page.

Now onto the home page structure. The content is arranged in a vertical format requiring the visitor's eyes to move accordingly. The first column on the left offers the site’s main navigation features and the next column focuses on exhibitions and showcases two photos for ongoing gallery shows from Jeff Wall and Armando Reveron.

It seems those images are strategically placed below the page's dominant eye catcher: a 760 x 200 Flash graphic cycling through exhibits, reviews while offering secondary navigation to the museum store and student podcasts. Once the viewer finishes watching the Flash image, the eye then moves to exhibits column and to Wall and Reveron's photos.

Color

The Museum of Modern Art employs gray as its primary color while black and white fill out the majority of the color used on the site. The colors, repeated throughout the site, are conservative as not to distract the viewer from studying the Flash graphic.

Photos

The Web site employs a rotating Flash image and four other images. The smaller images are anchors to draw the Web visitor to explore popular sections [membership support and exhibitions.]

Analysis

I have established that the content is arranged vertically requiring the visitor’s eyes to scan the page in an up-and-down fashion. The page is link and text heavy which makes it difficult to focus on any element outside of the photos. As the online face of Museum of Modern Art, I expected to see more creativity and more use of photos and art exhibits.

The mixture of the black-colored font and grey background allows for the reader to easily scan through the extensive list of links. The inside pages are two-columns and follow the repetition of black on grey found on the home page to create a clean, simple look. Sometimes less is truly more.

Interpretation

The site designed to pique the visitor’s curiosity about the museum’s exhibits and services. My emotional reaction? The solid, yet conservatively designed site functions well as a planning tool for its target audience: patrons and curious visitors of all ages.

Evaluation

The site is a success if the visitor exhibits the patience required to locate relevant links. A good bit of scrolling is also needed since the home page does not fit the parameters of an 800x600 screen. Those complaints should not discount the unassuming Web site's expert use of white space and unifying color scheme.

A Taste of Color

Can the taste of steak produce a blue hue in the mind? Does the taste of Mango sherbet translate into lime green with thin wavy strips of cherry red? Does Steamed gingered squid really bring the eater to see a glob of orange foam?

For in The condition is called Synesthesia, the act of mixing senses in where a person can hear colors and see sounds, for example.

"Its reality and vividness are what make Synesthesia so interesting in its violation of conventional perception. Synesthesia is also fascinating because logically it should not be a product of the human brain, where the evolutionary trend has been for increasing separation of function anatomically." Richard E. Cytowic, Synesthesia : A Union of the Senses.

I think the condition is fascinating because it questions our value system regarding basic objects. For instance, for people who fear clowns, do they see black? Red? How do people diagnosed with synesthesia bind all perceptions, say of a tree, into a complete whole?

Pretty Behind Pink Bars

So I did it. I used a clichéd reference to a great John Hughes film. And it seems the film is a favorite low-cost, high humiliation tool of sheriffs who valued the color pink to pacify inmates.

Remember the infamous Davidson County Sheriff, Gerald Hege? The man proclaimed, “I love the smell of handcuffs in the morning” and prided himself on running the toughest jail in America. Well, he did repaint a jail pink with blue teddy bears floating on all sides.

In a Salon.com interview published March 2000, Hege took pride on the effect his “Pink Alcatraz” produced:

"The [inmates] say, 'Sheriff, look -- I'm sittin' here, 40 years old, I'm looking at a Pepto-Bismol pink wall with blue teddy bears for goodness sake, I don't have a dime in the bank, I don't have a car to drive, look at me.' The whole jail thing is designed for kind of a humiliation," Hege says proudly.

He even instituted a policy that inmates wear colored jumpsuits to identify their offense: blue for misdemeanors, green for sex offenders and orange for felons.

Hege may see more of those pink jails up close since a judge indicted him on fifteen charges ranging from embezzlement, to obtaining property by false pretenses, to obstruction of justice. He later accepted a plea agreement.

The Branding of the Toronto Blue Jays

The Toronto Blue Jays have competed in Major League Baseball for 30 years (winning two World Championships) and they have undergone four logo changes in their brief history.

In contrast, the team's main rivals, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, recent World Series winners, have maintained their current look for more than 50 years.

So in 2003, the Blue Jays unveiled a new logo and color scheme. The logo is a styled Blue Jay extending to the left from the word Jays working from a color palette of blue, metallic silver and metallic graphite---a departure from the teams more conservative designs.

During the Blue Jays logo and uniform unveiling in September 2003, General Manager J.P. Ricciardi said the change would attract younger fans to support the team through merchandise sales.

"When you're in a market like ours, it's important to take advantage of a lot of the young kids that buy this stuff. The Blue Jays have only been around for 26 years -- we're not like the Yankees or Red Sox. This is something we have to delve in to get people interested in our look."

Canadian residents including myself were peeved the team and its creative consultants chose to drop the distinctive Maple Leaf from the emblem of Canada's only remaining Major League team. The team countered the new logo sought to connect with its community.

"We wanted the brand to stand more on its own," said Lisa Novak, the Blue Jays' senior vice president of business affairs. "People know we're a Canadian club. We want to appeal to our fans from western New York, and we no longer wanted to be thought of exclusively Canadian."

Branding the Toronto Blue Jays: The Message

With its sleek look and a more aggressive bird design, the Blue Jays management wanted to convey a fresh start for the team.

"If you took a snapshot of this team three years ago and then took a snapshot of it now, from a business point of view it's changed dramatically," Team President and CEO Paul Godfrey said in 2003. "We're now seeking, through our marketing and through this logo, a whole new approach to the game. This logo, in my opinion, symbolized energy, enthusiasm, confidence and determination. That's what we were looking for, both on the field and off the field."

The logo and uniform change fit into the law of quality, mentioned in Al and Luara Ries’ book, 22 Immutable Laws of Branding. Team officials want the play on the field to match the characteristics of its logo as described by Godfrey. The Blue Jays branding can be found on its uniform and can be found on its Web site and all forms of memorabilia from baseball cards to bats to signs around its home stadium, the Rogers Centre.

The brand is reinforced through the play of its star players including pitcher Roy Halladay, outfielder Vernon Wells and closer B.J. Ryan during televised games.

Branding the Toronto Blue Jays: Culture

The Blue Jays brand, while not as recognizable as the Yankees and Red Sox, is designed to appeal to its baseball fans worldwide.

A prime example of niche marketing, the Blue Jays invoke strong feelings of loyalty among its fans in Canada and in northern portion of the United States. The brand will ultimately grow in popularity, though, when it returns to the post-season---a feat last accomplished during its glory years of the early 1990s.

Week Four: The Weak Sign

Imagine you are driving down a one-lane road in a European country when you spot a triangle-shaped sign with a red border framing a drawing of a broken bed. What would you think? Would you think the municipality disallowed sleeping in the road? Or that beds are forbidden on the road? Or "Warning! Falling beds ahead?" Roadway signs convey clear and succinct information. They should not leave the driver working through confusion and doubt.