Comparison of 2 Bank/Credit Union Web Sites

I started this comparison with a clear winner in my head, but after applying Williams' design concepts and ignoring my personal preferences towards institutions, I realized that both sites are pretty bad, so consider that when viewing the site I called the "winner"

Winner: MacDill Federal Credit Union - http://www.macdill.org
This web site has some characteristics that make it the better of the two sites, but not related to text. I like that there is a blue background to the page and how the main content is centered within my browser window (I hate, with a passion, pages that are left aligned within the browser). Also, there is use of red accents that grab the viewers eye. Since this week's topic is more related to text, I tried to focus my analysis on this facet of the site and found that the only contrast anywhere on the page is within advertisements. The most obvious, of course, is the huge text used for the 6.49% HELOC displayed in white on a blue background; this contrast, I would say, is one of the best examples of contrast that I've found outside of our text books. Other contrasting fonts are seen in the ads on the side of the page (particularly in the decorative fonts used on the MacDill Perks ad and the Share Builder ad). Otherwise, the logo text is a bold sans serif (with what Williams' calls a "fake" italic) with another sans serif underneath (which contrasts in terms of weight and size, but isn't a huge difference). On the text of the main page, there is no contrast...All navigation and text is the same size and weight and the only contrast at all is in the subheadings which are just a bold version of the body text displayed in a slightly larger point size. Overall, this site employs a concordant relationship with its text; only one type family with little variation is used throughout the page. While the look is consistent, it is extremely dull.

Loser: Wachovia - http://www.wachovia.com
This site is a mess and it makes me sad that someone out there was paid to create it. Most of the reasons that I don't like it are related to overall layout more than text, but the text does play a role. I don't like the left alignment of the page in my browser window (it looks to me like half the page is missing), I don't like how there are 4 columns on the page (really, would 3 kill them?), and I don't like the overall boxy look of the page because it doesn't fit with their wavy logo. You can see at the bottom of the left column (the pewter color column) where they tried to continue the wave with the curve on the bottom of the box, but they don't carry it throughout the page. This was a big disappointment to me. Now, in terms of text, they use a small caps modern font on their wordmark with a smaller version of the same font repeated on the body of the page as subheadings. When used as subheadings, the small caps font is inconsistent (sometimes it is used as a link, sometimes it's not, sometimes links are underlined, sometimes they're not...). And, there are other subheadings that are a bold sans serif (ie: Arial)...the reader isn't really sure which sections are more important than others. Regular text, though, is consistently the same size sans serif.

*Jen