Landscape Institute SW

[David]

I've just been informed of the launch of a brand new website for the South West branch of the Landscape Institute. This is my home patch so I have a vested interest in it.

The email I just got from them is asking for comments :blink:

Should I really let them know what I think?

www.lisw.org.uk (http://www.lisw.org.uk/)

Bear in mind when making your comments that Landscape Architecture is a Design profession.

[Tom]

It could be an opportunity to sharpen-up your invective. Today's Sunday Times has an example for you to rival: the Lenabese Druze leader described Donald Rumsfeld's seputy (Wolfowitz) as a 'filthy son of a harlot of Zion'. Its shaming.

[David]

Invective ahoy!

I can't let this rest and will be writing to Landscape Magazine, Director General and President of LI.

This is the email notification I received from SWLI:

Landscape Southwest website goes live!

The Southwest Branch of the Landscape Institute is delighted to announce the launch of its new website www.lisw.org.uk. Visit it. Let us know what you think. Suggestions always welcome.

Who’s it aimed at?

The website aims to:

provide info for members, eg news, forthcoming events, reports of events held; and help promote the profession to the world outside.
The well-structured ‘links’ page will connect you with a wide range of other regional and national sites.

I am most concerned about "promote the profession to the world outside". Unless I am very much mistaken, Landscape Architecture is a design profession. This website is neither professional nor well designed - in fact, it has obviously been created by a visual illiterate.

As a matter of interest, I did a quick survey of other branch sites and the majority are no better. Take a look at this shocker from the East Anglia branch (http://eabli.org.uk/).

Is it any wonder student numbers in Landscape are on the decline?

[Phil]

I am in shock. My previous favourite bad site nichollfoodpackaging.co.uk (http://www.nichollfoodpackaging.co.uk/) has got two serious competitors here. I don't know how you would even begin to "let us know what you think".

The only silver lining i can see is that you could use these sites in teaching students how *not* to design (if I can use that word).

[Tom]

David, I was going to suggest your doing the job properly and making a 'comment' on the Landscape Institute (http://www.l-i.org.uk/) website - but my former pet hate has had a euthanasia experience. No one could call its replacement beautiful but it is more functional and one can see that it is a work in progress. Roman emperors were 'raised to the purple' and wore this colour because it was the most expensive of dyes. But this is the yukky mauve beloved of toy designers - is it still used for My Little Pony? One assumes they are going to continue using photography on the home page and this is colour is unlikely to harmonize with many landscape photographs. The designers also have a nostalgic fondness for meta tags.

[James]

Just spent 15 minutes tearing this apart (tested in IE):

. site uses frames - badly. You can actually scroll the top frame up and down and left and right - it is not fixed in place.

. the awful map on the hompage is one of the worst things I have ever seen:
. blurred GIF
. hotspots don't look like links and the other hotspots flicker and disappear when you hover
. clicking on the map gives you a list of contacts - the only clue to this being there is the hyperlink hand and ALT TEXT (Alt Text would not be visible in Mozilla)

. site title is an image not an H1 and has no ALT TEXT

. showcase page uses ALT TEXT instead of properly formatted text. This would be completely invisible to Mozilla users.

. advice page has bullet points which are not HTML bullet points, they're just full stops (rather like in this post!)

. logo is not clickable back to homepage

. terrible Google rank, I could only find it by searching for the URL. Even then there is no description in Google other than the URL.


Are you going to feed back to them David? It's appalling but probably done by a friend of a member in their bedroom (it appears to have been done in Dreamweaver). The criticism is probably best aimed at whoever commissioned it!

Cheers

[David]

Originally posted by James Barker@Mar 9 2005, 3:09 pm
Are you going to feed back to them David? It's appalling but probably done by a friend of a member in their bedroom (it appears to have been done in Dreamweaver). The criticism is probably best aimed at whoever commissioned it!
Thanks for that James. You are right about where the blame lies. This is a bigger issue than simply a badly designed website. I believe the LI have been grossly negligent in allowing the various branches to develop their own sites unaided. One bad branch site, irrespective of the quality of the rest, affects the perception of the whole profession. So, my "invective" will be directed at the LI management and not at the poor soul who obviously spent a lot of time creating that piece of s...

[Tom]

Spare the rod and spoil the child!