Monticello Website

Monticello Website

Digital Artifacts

This is a screenshot of the homepage of the Monticello website. I find the homepage very overwhelming. While it is neatly organized in distinct, differently-colored sections, each of the seven sections take up the entire screen and to get to the bottom, you have to pass through so much information it can become overwhelming. However, I think the creators of the page were trying to fit all the greatest hits from each menu item into one page. Their goal is for something, anything, to hook you. If any of them do and you want to see more, each corresponding menu link takes you to that page. The nested pages are much less sophisticated. There is a navigation tree to the left, allowing you to jump down the pages and to different sections within that nested page. Those pages are expressly for the user who intentionally wanted to know about that specific topic, not someone who came to browse. The Monticello website is also a marketing tool. The website is a stepping stone to the grounds, so its main goal is to convince visitors to make the trip to Monticello, even if (and especially when) planning the trip was not the main reason for visiting the site. It is well known in today’s world that “good graphic design is a highly efficient way of communicating a marketing message visually” (Towers, Omnific Design). The muted colors are meant to be visually pleasing in order to foster a feeling of peace and suggest to visitors that the grounds will give them that same feeling.

Emma Moore

Emma Moore