Well, it finally happened. The immense redesign of billygraham.org (my former employer)—that was initiated only four months after the redesign me and my team slaved over—is finally up. Not everyone is happy with the new look, and I can’t say that I blame them.
For a sense of perspective, you can check out the Internet Archive for past versions of the Billy Graham web site (though the graphics don’t always load). I worked in the Internet Department from 2001 until halfway through 2003. You can see three different designs, though the difference between the first two is primarily cosmetic.
I hate to rag on the new design. I have friends who still work there, friends who don’t have the luxury of shaking their heads and moving on to something else. It’s painful to see some of the changes. We spent eight months working on our redesign, only to see it prematurely dismantled. You’ll have to forgive my bitterness.
I hate to be elitist and act like I know web design better than anyone. Or marketing or ministry or business. The fact is many organizations and businesses make decisions I don’t agree with, but none strike me so deeply as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Maybe it’s because I see so much unfulfilled potential, as someone else said. Maybe it’s because I invested two and a half years of my life in that organization. Maybe it’s because I like Billy and deep down I want him to be cool. I mean, OK, C’mon.
Best. Title. Ever.
I didn’t look really closely at the site, but from an “artsy” person’s perspective, it doesn’t look bad. I wasn’t like, “Ooooo! Cool page!” But, it did look fine, professional, whatnot. Doesn’t look like something I’d bookmark & read though. :-)
Spinning barrels. They forgot to add spinning barrels.
What, exactly, is so bad with the design? I can agree with disgruntlement (perhaps, since I don’t pay much attention to it) with where the association is going, but the site didn’t look all that bad to me. I’m no designer of course, but visually, etc. it seems to work well. Your link complained about the page’s size, yet my normally plodding 56k opened it up just fine, etc.
Convince me, or I just may have the private thought that some are just retaining bitterness over other things when it comes to criticizing the design. ;) All in good fun of course.
Oh. Forgot to add. That title is indeed hilarious. Hehe, and your ending lines.
You see, you’re not supposed to be objective. You’re supposed to realize I’m mainly being bitter towards my former employer and indulge me. Sigh.
Especially as you venture into the site you’ll notice it’s shortcomings. The preference for enormous pictures really stretches the site out, to the point where it’s hard to navigate. Any listing of highlights is difficult to read and takes up an incredible amount of screen space. But if you really want to see some bad BG design, check out thecove.org. Side-scrolling is so 1998.
But seriously, it’s not that the new design is terrible. It’s not. In the realm of web design it’s pretty decent. I’m not denying that. What’s so troubling is the lack of forward progress, the abandonment of a lot of people’s hard work, the waste of a lot of money (though I suppose I shouldn’t get into that). We worked hard on our design, and I just wish some of the positive steps forward that we took would have been carried forward into this design.
Indulge you? *ahem* Sorry, I must have been taking lessons from you. ;)
Seriously though, I can understand where you’re coming from. You did a lot of work on a different site, and it was tossed aside like nothing in no time at all for a site that isn’t bad or great. That does rather hurt. But still, given your opinion of certain people that made that decision, should that really matter to you?
Oh, and I can kinda see the picture/big page effect. I’d agree that they could have done something better there, for sure.