City Websites

http://www.marylandhistoricaltrust.net/ - Not a particularly attractive or easy to navigate site, but it has some good information. It contains a lot of historical information about areas of Maryland, so it is an important resource. However, the individual pages are not particularly laid out well. They are just huge chunks of text with images scattered in between. This makes it hard to find the information you might want.

http://www.nycvisit.com/home/index.cfm - This is a very attractive and coherent site with more of an emphasis on tourism, but that is what New York is mostly about. While some tourist spots are entertainment-based, historical areas of New York are also included in the tourism attractions. The calendar page gives information for a wide variety of enriching events in any section of New York.

http://www.lacvb.com/ - The site for Los Angeles tourism is very similar to the New York page. Both have a very professional look and feel to them. The information on this site and the look of the pages convey an image of Los Angeles which seems to be fitting for the city's entertainment industry and lifestyle.

Good and Bad Layouts

Good Sites

Huh? Corp - A comical website (I hope) that is a parody of new-age marketing and consulting firms that create longwinded bios and information to try and make themselves seem different from any other marketing/consulting firm. Besides it's humorous content, it has a very basic, clean, and colorful design. They parody the style of site that one of these types of firms would use very well.

James Alliban - Another web portfolio I found, but I really like the layout and flash design. The container stretches or shrinks to fit the content needed for each section. The music is nice and gives an idea of the designer's personality. The color choices also compliment the laid back, smooth style.


Bad Sites

http://www.state.fl.us/dms/betterwebsites/bad.html - This is not actually a site, but a site of examples of bad sites. They take excerpts from other government pages and show what some bad ideas are. Although you cannot move to the actual sites to see them in context, it does offer some good tips on what to avoid in design.

http://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/main.htm - Again, just an example. Not only is it "The World's Worst Website", but it is also hosted on the world's worst web domain (Angelfire). This web page really brings me back, as there are plenty of annoying animated gifs that are totally unnecessary, a background the color of puke (also with animation), an annoying midi song on loop, and terrible color choices for text and boxes. It hurt to look at this page.