The Ugly Showcase of Military, Intelligence And Defense Websites
Members of military and intelligence forces around the world risk their lives daily to defend their countries and assist in peacekeeping and aid missions both at home and abroad. The men and women who make up the world’s defense forces make sacrifices that most civilians wouldn’t consider to serve their countries.
So, with everything they do for us, shouldn’t they be represented online by website designs that reflect the honor and responsibility they undertake every day? Unfortunately, that’s not the case in many countries out there. Many military websites out there are some of the worst designs in any industry. Whether they’re outdated, broken or designed by amateurs, some of the websites showcased below are bad enough to make you cringe.
There are some good ones, though. A number of countries have obviously dedicated the time and resources necessary to project a professional and polished Web presence for their members. A number of other websites have obviously put in some effort and are pretty close. If you know of examples of other great military or intelligence websites from around the world, please add them in the comments!
The Outdated
The websites featured here might have looked great 10 or more years ago (which was likely when they were created). But either their designs haven’t been updated in a very long time or their designers are still borrowing conventions from the late ’90s.
Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Argentina
Everything from the color scheme to the header image to the skinny three-column layout dates this design.
Royal Bahamas Defence Force
This website wouldn’t look quite so dated if it weren’t for the drop-shadows behind the content blocks.
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
The overall layout of this website screams early-2000s.
Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Belarus
Very minimalistic website. Unfortunately, gradients, tiny links and many  -empty spaces make it look dated.
Colombian National Police
Here’s another great example of a website that would have looked right at home in the late ’90s or early 2000s.
Hellenic Navy
The thing that dates this website the most is its width: it would look right at home on a screen with a resolution of 800×600.
Macedonian Ministry of Defence
The layout, the partially rounded corners and the drop-shadow against the background all date this website.
Pakistan Maritime Security Agency
Using an image like this one as a background was very popular in the ’90s.
Serbian Ministry of Defense
The layout here is almost grid-like, but it doesn’t quite make it. The color scheme is the most outdated, though.
Slovenian Armed Forces
Another website that would have been current 8 to 10 years ago.
Spanish Armada
The rounded colors and glossy buttons would have looked great a few years ago, but now they just harken back to the earliest days of the Web 2.0 style.
The Russian Federation Ministry of Defence
The design has a striking resemblance to traditional Google AdSense blocks, and the line-height property for the content area certainly should be increased..
Sri Lanka Ministry of Defence
The color scheme and typography here are definitely reminiscent of Web design 5 to 10 years ago.
U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation
The skinny layout, color scheme and overall look of this website feel at least 6 to 7 years old.
U.S. National Reconnaissance Office
This website screams late ’90s and early 2000s, especially the navigation and typography.
Uruguayan Air Force
This looks like it was based on a standard template from 5 to 10 years ago.
The Poorly Coded
These websites might not have been so bad if they were cross-browser compatible and adhered to Web standards even a little. But they are all so poorly coded that they don’t render correctly in browsers such as Firefox or Safari.
Luckily, there aren’t too many of them.
Brazilian Army
The coding on this website isn’t noticeably horrible… except for all the thin white lines running through the backgrounds and borders of the content blocks.
Pakistan Navy
I don’t even want to begin figuring out how they got the rounded-corner background to repeat like that in the main content area.
South African Army
This website wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the giant gray bar running down the main column, effectively blocking half the content.
United States Special Operations Command
The headers for all the content blocks here are fine, except the one for the news feeds, which prefers to be higher up on the page.
The Poorly Designed
These websites are just poorly designed. Some look like they were based on stock templates… bad ones. Others look like they were designed in programs aimed at hobbyists or those needing to set up personal websites (in any case, definitely not appropriate for government agencies).
Venezuelan Bolivarian Army
Between the color scheme, the header (which doesn’t come close to spanning the whole design) and the broken icons, this website just doesn’t look good at all.
Cuban National Defence
I’m not sure where to begin with this one…
Egyptian Armed Forces
It looks like they couldn’t decide whether they wanted a minimalist website.
Republic of Fiji Military Forces
This looks like your classic template website, with minor modifications.
Ministry of Defence of Georgia
This wouldn’t be so bad if the content areas weren’t so disjointed.
Indian Air Force
This might have been salvageable, except for the horrible alignment.
Kenyan National Security Intelligence Service
The padding and margins in this website aren’t adequate, and the alignment is off in places. The concept is sound; it just needs to be better executed.
Lebanese Army
This website might not have been so bad if the colors complemented the camouflage background, rather than clashed with it.
The Philippine Marine Corps
This is another one for which I’m not even sure where to start.
Polish Land Forces
Forget for a moment how amateurish this one looks. Notice how the text doesn’t even match up with the navigation buttons.
Portuguese Army
From the header alone, it’s not so bad. It’s the lower area of this website that doesn’t seem to have any aim.
Romanian Land Forces
I’m still trying to figure out if that white bar across the top of each column is supposed to be there. Beyond that, they should have paid more attention to how the header colors go with the rest of the color scheme.
Royal Thai Army
There’s just way too much going on here, and no focal point to grab your attention.
Turkish Air Force
This almost made it into the “Not So Bad” category below, except that it doesn’t have any focus, and the alignment of some elements is off.
Ministry of Defence of Ukraine
The ads on this website should be better integrated in the overall design. Other than that, the design looks very dated.
United Arab Emirates Ministry of Defence
Where’s the content?
Zimbabwe Ministry of Defence
There’s no color scheme here, and the entire thing looks like something a kid did in class.
The Not-So-Bad
The websites here aren’t terrible. In most cases, only minor things hold them back. Most of them could be great with just a bit more work.
Ministry of Defence of The Republic of Armenia
Other than the width of this website (which is a bit narrow for even an 800 x 600 display), it’s not a terrible design.
Australian Secret Intelligence Service
This design is just fine, other than being a bit boring. And the text could be slightly enlarged for easier reading.
Ministry of Defense of Bosnia and Herzegovina
If more attention was paid to the baseline or vertical rhythm, this would be a reasonably good design.
British Secret Intelligence Service
The angles in this design should either be better incorporated into the other elements or removed altogether. Other than that, it’s not bad.
Bundeswehr
This is one of those websites that doesn’t have anything particularly wrong with it. It’s just underwhelming.
Ministry of National Defense of the People’s Republic of China
The elements on this website don’t quite have enough continuity, but the color scheme and overall layout are good.
Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Croatia
This website is also underwhelming. Nothing particularly “wrong” with it, but not impressive either.
Ecuadorian Army
The header here isn’t that bad, but the rest of the website doesn’t match up, and it feels a bit like a generic template.
Ecuadorian Navy
Parts of this website are great (the slidehow in the header, for instance) but other parts don’t quite match up, particularly the buttons on the right-hand side and the off-center navigation elements.
Armed Forces of Honduras
This website isn’t bad. But again, nothing makes it stand out.
Norwegian Ministry of Defense
Another example of a website that doesn’t do anything to stand out.
Peruvian Air Force
The idea here is good, but the result isn’t very interesting.
Portuguese Ministry of Defense
Another inoffensive yet unimpressive website.
Portuguese Navy
This would be great, but it has just a little too much going on. Some negative space would make a huge difference.
Saudi Arabian Ground Forces
This website is more interesting than some of the others here, but it doesn’t quite pull it together.
Sri Lanka Navy
Here’s another website that looks like a template. The use of white space could be better and makes everything look a bit disjointed.
Swiss Army
Another underwhelming, uninteresting design. At least it looks professional.
US Air Force
A professional yet boring design. But maybe that’s how military websites should look?
US Central Intelligence Agency
This website is way too narrow, and overall it’s just not eye-catching.
US Department of Defense
Too much is going on here, and the social media links (the icons especially) on the left look out of place.
US Navy
The icons and banners in the header don’t really fit the rest of this design.
A Few Good Sites
The websites below are the stars of this post. They are well designed, easy to use, professional and worthy of representing the armed forces and intelligence services.
Austrian Armed Forces
This one’s clean and well laid out, with plenty of white space and a great color scheme.
British Army
A professional-looking website, with a background that’s more interesting than most.
British Royal Air Force
Another website with an interesting background and a clean overall design.
British Security Service MI5
The color scheme here is great, as is the overall aesthetic, which is a cross between minimalist and magazine-style.
Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Bulgaria
A clean, well thought out design that makes good use of textures and gradients.
Chilean Navy
The header here is fantastic, and the rest of the layout works well.
Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces of the Czech Republic
Another great header design: this one doubles as navigation. Each section of the website has a different color scheme, while maintaining the same basic look.
Defence Command Denmark
A minimalist layout that leaves plenty of white space.
The Finnish Defense Forces
A clean and organized design, with double-tabbed navigation bars.
Netherlands Ministry of Defence
The purple color scheme here is unexpected, but it works well and sets the website apart.
Polish Ministry of National Defense
This is one of the nicest designs in this post, especially because of the header.
Swedish Armed Forces
A good clean design with a minimalist aesthetic and great typography. The transparent titles over the images on the right really take it up a notch.
US National Security Agency
Professional, easy to use and coherent: everything an intelligence website should be.
US Army
The US Army website brings together a lot of content of various types while maintaining a usable and consistent user interface.
US Marine Corps
This website stands out mostly because of the grid used for the main content area and the ample white space everywhere else.
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Callum Chapman
June 23rd, 2010 3:02 amA great follow up to my article for Noupe some months back now: “The Ultimate Ugly Showcase of Current Government Websites” (http://www.noupe.com/showcases/the-ultimate-ugly-showcase-of-current-government-websites.html).
There are some quite decent ones here, I like the British Royal Air Force site. Good work Cameron! :)
Paul
June 23rd, 2010 3:34 amA great follow up comment to crow bar a link to your article.
Dylan Parry
June 23rd, 2010 3:56 amIndeed, it’s definitely a follow-up to your article. I recall ~50% of comments saying how bad your article was btw, and the same criticisms can be made of this one.
Eddy
July 1st, 2010 11:19 pmThis article is not that perfect, but it’s a hundred times better than your shameless plug link. No, definitely not a follow-up.
flip flop
June 23rd, 2010 3:05 amtot ugly to SHOW in every CASE.
Gport
June 23rd, 2010 3:11 amHaha funny to see this. Luckily the Dutch army does things better:
http://www.werkenbijdelandmacht.nl/
NavyDesign
June 23rd, 2010 3:16 amCameron, what about Kosovo Defense Ministry http://mksf-ks.org/?page=2,1 which category would you put it?
Julio
June 23rd, 2010 3:18 amThe website of the venzuelan Ministry of Defence is not “Bolivian and Venezuelan”… It’s “Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela”
Very ugly site, BTW
Daniel
June 23rd, 2010 3:18 amIt’s called Bundeswehr not Brundeswehr ;) as a german website you should know that
btw, some look really good, and i guess it’s just some of the countries don’t put much effort on their sites or don’t want to pay a professional designer
Smashing Editorial
June 23rd, 2010 3:27 amThanks, Daniel. Corrected the typo. :-)
Martin
June 29th, 2010 4:40 amWell… it isn’t exactly not the ability for hiring a good designer…
But in Bundeswehr’s case it is certainly the overall administrative approach which prohibts more excitement…. Just google and you might find the online-Corporate Design manual for the Bundeswehr…. it is detailled and comprehensive… even though it is quite outdated…
But the PR work of our armed forced is traditionally subtle and kinda less bells ‘n whistles… compared to e.g. the U.S. Military…
It reminds me of the case of the fired America Airlines designer who responded to the critisizm of their corporate website…
It’s all structures and procedures after all…
Cheers,
M.
Gab
June 23rd, 2010 3:21 amIs it really useful? I think you are wasting your time with those kind of showcase. Did Smashing Mag ran out of good content?
Smashing Editorial
June 23rd, 2010 3:30 amGab, we are trying to be open-minded and cover both interesting and useful content on Smashing Magazine. Please take a look around, and check previous articles if you don’t like this one. The point of the article was to present the current state of the military / defense web design.
Pete Morley
June 23rd, 2010 7:05 amTo be fair, as a web designer, I find this article neither interesting or useful SM.
cezar
June 23rd, 2010 7:29 amThis article isn’t writen for you especially. I found the advices usefull, we can analize those websites in detail and we will know exactly what to avoid. As a designer, i always learn something.
Good luck,
Scott
June 23rd, 2010 7:37 amI work full time as a web designer in a government agency. This article was really helpful. It is also nice to see that it can be done. One would be surprised how many user interface challenges I see, not to mention the political/bureaucratic website dogma.
Speider
June 25th, 2010 1:11 amIn a “design-by-committee” world or a “I-grab-all-the-power” situation, I imagine the web designers were being threatened to make changes by “creative” government administrators, holding a nuclear missile to the designer’s head.
Obviously the request to the designer was to fit 20 liters of information into a five liter bucket while being given directions for content and not functionality or beauty. One of those jobs where you collect your paycheck and get drunk a lot to forget.
Scott
June 28th, 2010 11:51 amInteresting thoughts.. However, the-powers-that-be tend to be more concerned with the visual elements than the content. This is usually my biggest challenge: little to no content with grand ideas.
…And it is a lovely paycheck. :D
Nil
June 23rd, 2010 4:10 amI feel the same… lately the only bit is really worth visiting is the Smashing Network…
Sebastian
June 23rd, 2010 3:23 amJust and FYI. It is not the Bolivian and Venezuelan Army, its only the Venezuelan Army. The official name includes Bolivariano, in recognition of Simon Bolivar. And the Bolivian website is actually from Venezuela, same thing.
Oh, and my eyes hurt. You would think if an army can afford a tank, they could pay for decent web designers.
Federico Capoano
June 23rd, 2010 3:25 amMilitary risk their life everyday. YES for who? For us? To protect us?
NO!
They risk their life for MONEY. Most soldiers have no other choice than join the army to sustain their family. They get BRAINWASHED.
They risk their life every day for big reconstruction companies, weapon industry and the corrupted expanding bank system.
They risk their life every day for the people who KILLED J.F. KENNEDY – for this reason I wouldn’t even dear to work for them or to be interested in checking out their web-site.
Peace
Drew G
June 23rd, 2010 3:59 amThat’s a very ignorant comment Federico…
…And you have the freedom to post ignorant comments like that because Sailors, Soldiers, Airmen and Marines are out there everyday, risking their lives, defending those freedoms… which you obviously take for granted.
Savarage
June 23rd, 2010 5:43 amPlease tell me you’re joking Drew.. Didn’t you learn anything at high school? Defending our freedom, yea right. Oh wait, you’re american..
Federico Capoano
June 23rd, 2010 1:57 pmDefending Freedom??
Do you know anything about J.F. Kennedy?
Do you know why they killed him?
To shut him up because he wanted the people to be free from the corrupted banking system and secret societies.
So you believe you are free?
“The worst dictatorship is the one in which the citizens think to be free”
These are not my words.
Think about it
PEACE
PS: if you think I’m ignorant, well you should start to open your eyes
In my opinion this is the crapest article here on SM. Ugly web-sites, sad subject.
Rene
June 23rd, 2010 6:16 amSavarage and Federico Capoano if you’re not – from America – next time when you are invaded by alian forces don’t call America to save you butts. Call The UN they will help you for Sure.
Get a life.
Federico Capoano
June 23rd, 2010 1:59 pmItaly and America are ruled by the same people, so there’s no need to call the UN, they’ll send their global army in case of need.
Open your eyes.
Peace
andy
June 23rd, 2010 7:44 pmthe world is controlled by a secret society that killed jfk, faked the moon landing, removed conan from the tonight show, something something vaccines, and orchestrated 9/11! wake up sheeple!!!
Jeff
July 8th, 2010 10:07 pmwow. You’re an idiot.
Barbara
June 23rd, 2010 6:55 amYou should be thankful they are willing to do this so you don’t have to.
Craig
June 23rd, 2010 7:13 amI don’t usually advocate deleting comments, but if I were SM, I would delete this one.
Mike
June 23rd, 2010 8:17 amWow dude…. you are on the wrong website…
Bluestrike2
June 23rd, 2010 8:47 pmI think Federico here needs to change out his tin-foil hat. Seems to be getting a touch rusty.
Michael
June 24th, 2010 6:48 pmThe military risks their life for whatever reason they choose. I was in the Army and I was not brainwashed or anything like that. I joined simply to protect my country and do my part. Brainwashing implies that the military wants drones to do whatever is commanded of them. While I can’t vouch for other countries on that respect I’m sure they don’t either. A soldier should be a free-thinking individual who can carry out orders in the best way possible in a changing battlefield.
As for all the other things you mention, you’re entitled to your opinion. I’m not arguing any point just putting my two cents in.
Kaizer
June 23rd, 2010 3:28 amI agree with @Gab above. This is a total waste of time and look at the design of how it is presented here!
Also i noticed that the american armed forces websites do not figure here at all.
This leads me to believe that the writer is either
A. From the american armed forces or,
B. Employed by the American Armed forces or,
C. Has a very limited dataset to play around with.
D. Biased.
Saulo Maia Neto
June 23rd, 2010 3:47 amNo american armed forces websites? Did you read the whole post?
cogsprocket
June 23rd, 2010 3:49 amMost US military sites use PKI so the user would have to have a client certificate issued by the DoD trusted root. That being said the American Armed Forces are represented 10 times in this article. That’s 4 more mentions than the closest runner-up. They appear in all but one category, the poorly designed.
Bias indeed…
Edgar Leijs
June 23rd, 2010 3:29 amPhew! The Dutch Ministry of Defence site made it in the ‘good ones’ section.
(Yeah, I’m Dutch!)
Marijn van de r Werf
June 23rd, 2010 3:34 amLet’s hope they’re NOT gonna switch that one to the universal design as well. I really liked the old ministry sites a lot better…
Gert Hengeveld
June 23rd, 2010 8:32 amThey will, before januari 2011 most government websites will use the same branding. Here is a list of the organisations involved: http://bit.ly/9Bljub
I personally like the fact that the government is taking it’s websites very seriously, by developing the web standards for government websites (see http://webguidelines.nl ) and a single ‘corporate’ branding.
Artem
June 23rd, 2010 3:31 amI don’t think you can tell good professional design apart from others
Cosmin Negoita
June 23rd, 2010 3:33 amI really do not see any reason why this kind of web site should be other than ugly. I mean, there’s no point in spending a lot of money for a cool design. They just need to share the info, that’s all…
Smashing Editorial
June 23rd, 2010 3:37 amRight. However, every site needs to be user-friendly and have a proper presentation of the content. Visual design is indeed not important, but usability should certainly play an important role, don’t you think?
Cosmin Negoita
June 23rd, 2010 12:12 pmOf course, I agree. But think that those sites aren’t visited by designers, so they do not have so many critics. All those websites are in a way or another user-friendly. I really do not like to call them ugly. Actually, that’s what a professional website is, even if nowadays “professional” doesn’t have the same meaning anymore.
I could design a better website interface, but that doesn’t mean I am much better than the one who designed one of those. This is just what a site of that kind is needing…
Christina
June 23rd, 2010 1:37 pm“… so they do not have so many critics.”
I totally can’t agree with that: isn’t anybody who visits a website a critic of the visited website? And, by the way, if someone likes the design of a site, he or she will stay longer – the more information a visitor reads, the more he or she knows about the organisation behind. Maybe he or she will recommend the website, if it looks nice; not many people will recommend a website which has no good design. I think, it has immense impact on an organisation, whether its website is eye candy or just offering information in an average way…You would also rather look at a model in a nice dress than at one who wears a gunnysack, wouldn’t you? Even if you were interested in the character of the girl.
And especially on the internet, a good design means the possibility to survive and not to drown in the mass of bad designs…
Tranquillise
June 24th, 2010 1:50 amI kind of agree with this.
The fact is good design and usuability needs to follow on from who the target audience is. Us looking at the site as a critique from an aesthetic point of view is pretty pointless. Yes I think some of the sites look ugly but thats merely an opinion. If 90% of their target audience are finding the site usuable and pleasing then it has done it’s job.
These “professional” sites shouldn’t be taken out of context that they were designed for.
Henry Hoffman
June 24th, 2010 12:55 am“Visual design is indeed not important” – Smashing Editorial
…. what?
Greg Johnson
June 24th, 2010 7:40 amMy new favorite blockquote and cite
Steve Jones
June 23rd, 2010 3:38 amLooks like lots of opportunities for some enterprising person to get some new business ;-)
VincentB
June 23rd, 2010 3:40 amThe French one would fit in the “is this really an official website?” category: http://www.defense.gouv.fr
Alexandre B
June 23rd, 2010 3:41 amGreat article, few ones are really stunning !
French Minister of Defense could be in the outdated designs don’t you think ? => http://www.defense.gouv.fr
kim
June 23rd, 2010 9:18 amI agree with you, the french army website is really outdated and ugly. especially when you learn that the ministry of defense spent: last year for web a total of
380 000 euros
320 000 euros for hosting, maintenance, animation of defense.gouv.fr
30 000 euros for buying keywords (from 15 juin to 14 july 2009)
30 000 euros for communication campaigns
source: http://www.pcinpact.com/actu/news/57495-ministere-communication-internet-depense-communication.htm
a waste of public money !!
Cesar Valente
June 23rd, 2010 3:43 amIn the “poorly designed” section, the “Bolivian Army” shows the site of Venezuelan Bolivarian Army. Bolivia is another country. Great post, btw
Saulo Maia Neto
June 23rd, 2010 3:45 amThe first site in the “The Poorly Designed” section is also from Venezuela, and it has NOTHING to do with Bolivia. In Spanish, Bolivian is “boliviano”. “Bolivariano” refers to Símon Bolívar, a hero in several Spanish-speaking countries in South America.
As for the designs, there is absolutely no design I would consider very good. Don’t the military hire professional webdesigners?
baji
June 23rd, 2010 3:47 amSo , you rated websites solely on their design, not content? As I understand, color schemes are GIVEN and defined by national color.
Al Cullum
June 23rd, 2010 3:52 amWell this is interesting, especially the “few good sites”, because most of them are terrible. Chile, Czech and Poland have great, even fantastic headers? And the British army website is “professional-looking”? Give me a break.
Considering the available resources of these institutions, overall their web-presence is a complete disgrace, and there’s no sugar-coating it. I’m not surprised, though, because the military tends to be one of the most conservative institutions out there.
Not saying there aren’t any good ones, though. The Finnish and the MI5 do stand out.
Nicole
June 23rd, 2010 10:55 amI’d agree with this. It seems like while she was writing the article the overwhelming mediocrity of these sites wore her down and by the end of the post up was down and right was wrong.
The one from Chile has the worst header- they didn’t even change the default photoshop settings on the outer glow before they collaged it all together. It’s better than a broken website from 1995, sure, but it still ain’t great.
Mark Welbedacht
June 23rd, 2010 3:57 amWhat about the recruitment website of the Royal Dutch Airforce:
http://www.werkenbijdeluchtmacht.nl/
Tyler Collins
June 23rd, 2010 4:00 amThis post is like a what not to do on websites! Good post :)
Not Military, but Police – Police Service Of Northern Ireland.
They had their website re-designed within the last year, check it out.
http://www.psni.police.uk/
Vitali
June 23rd, 2010 4:10 amNothing beats http://www.stratologia.gr/ , which is the official website of the conscription office of Greece.
And of course, most of the website is still under construction. Most of the links are also dead. 75% of the budget is (as always) from the European Union, so, money well spent Comrade-Generals (Yuri voice)
Hooray for conscription.
damsen
June 23rd, 2010 4:11 amWhat do you think of navy.com why did you leave it out?
Ash
June 23rd, 2010 4:17 amExcellent article.
Manuel Ressel
June 23rd, 2010 4:18 amI think this is an interesting showcase. It provides an insight into the relationship between a country and its army.
One page I definitely missed is the website of the American Air Force (http://airforce.com/). It’s one of the most emotional, persuasive, well-designed military websites with a great use of different media. I think they had a high budget for that website and it shows how much there is the need for more volunteers for the american army.
Pils
June 23rd, 2010 4:19 amRoyal air force (dutch.):
http://www.luchtmachtbase-x.nl/
germaine
June 23rd, 2010 4:26 amArrg, you could have included us, the french :)
http://www.defense.gouv.fr/
Matthew
June 23rd, 2010 4:31 amgood showcase, but there are a few other military websites that deserve a good mention, the Australian defence force has a pretty good website http://www.defencejobs.gov.au.
The Canadian Forces have a fairly average website but its worth a look http://www.forces.ca and the Ministry of National Defence for the peoples republic of China have a really nice site as well eng.mod.gov.cn/.
reply and tell me what you thought was best.
Nate Johnson
June 23rd, 2010 4:33 amFor at least one on this list, things are changing. We are working together with the FBI to redesign a few of their pages. The FBI site overall is getting a redesign, and Level 2 is handling the history section, and the fun & games section. It might be painful until it’s done, but keep an eye on the FBI site for upcoming awesomeness.
Nick
June 23rd, 2010 4:33 amI work in law enforcement and I am sure a similar set of screenshots could be pulled together to say how bad our websites are collectively too.
I believe that branding is very important because it promotes public confidence. A first impression lasts. Therefore, it doesn’t inspire me that some of the defense sites are so poor because it gives me an impression of the rest of the organisation being similarly badly run.
However, I also understand that branding isn’t, and shouldn’t be, the priority of most of these organisations. Defense or law enforcement is. It seems a little unfair to criticise them especially as most of them are publicly funded and facing extreme financial difficulties at the moment.
A showcase like this is interesting when it promotes best practice but just criticism for the sake of it seems a waste and not constructive at all.
SAlien
June 23rd, 2010 4:39 amUS Central Intelligence Agency – as for me it is really cool…
what do you want from them? some crazy orange and lime colors to catch eye? they just have straight official style…
do you really think for example British Army site looks better O.o yeah…fading background is so up to date…
Ben
June 23rd, 2010 4:40 amI cant believe some of the sites you have suggested are good! There mostly all shockingly poor. Describing the Ecuadorian Army header which cant even repeat a background properly as great is beyond me.Smashing mag, perhaps you could try harder to ensure you publish articles from people with a basic understanding of the subject there writing about in future?
Smashing Editorial
June 23rd, 2010 5:36 amAt no point did the author of the article suggest that Ecuadorian Army is great. Please read the article again. Compared to sites mentioned in the very beginning of the article, this design is better.
valentin
June 23rd, 2010 4:40 amhey guys what you think about the mexican one: http://www.sedena.gob.mx/
same ugly template used by all the mexican gov sites.
I apreciate all your comments and what’s the comunity’s opinion
B.Czar
June 23rd, 2010 4:42 amThat Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Belarus site gave my index finger a nice beefy workout on the mouse wheel having to scroll the content. The only two things I can say to that particular site are: a) ‘why’? and b) CMS.
Drew Clarke
June 23rd, 2010 4:44 amHugely proud that the UK forces made it into the Good category.
Don’t forget the ‘senior service’ http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/
It would be interesting to come back to this one in a year or so, to see how this particular bunch of sites has further evolved – side by side.
Paul
June 23rd, 2010 4:45 amDarpa should be up there with the ugly’s at no.1 fact.
http://www.darpa.mil/
DF
June 23rd, 2010 5:01 amHoly crap, I feel like I am back in high school.
Mike
June 23rd, 2010 8:25 amAgreed
LarsS
June 23rd, 2010 5:09 amFun to watch, although I don’t always agree. For instance don’t understand how the “Defence Command Denmark”-website could go under “Good sites” – It’s just plain borring to look at :-)
dram
June 23rd, 2010 5:14 amoh god let me unsee this
yaniv
June 23rd, 2010 5:19 amhttp://www.iaf.org.il/Templates/Homepage/Homepage.aspx
The Israeli Air Force site is a good example of great design and ui work..
Matthew
June 23rd, 2010 11:33 pmthe Israeli Air For force website would be alright if there was some content.
Stevie J.
June 24th, 2010 11:34 amSite doesnt even load up. Get a popup warning saying “undefined”.
Very poor.
effectus
June 25th, 2010 12:31 amIt’s IE only! typical to many Israeli sites…
Rakesh Sivan
July 1st, 2010 12:08 amThe Israeli website takes too much time to load and graphic intensified. Don’t seem appealing also.
w3bdev
June 23rd, 2010 5:25 amThe Indian air force website is hilarious. Speaks to so many levels to me why not to hire an Indian outsourcing company. Lots of nastiness here, but I don’t expect much from government sites. Most of these are not created by designers, but someone who doesn’t know anything about websites, design or code.
Mostly managers that want something to do with their day, or, an intern looking to take a break from support calls.
I know there is a dream of all sites being clean, accessible, and up-to-date, but truly, there isn’t enough talent in this industry, or funding to complete, all the projects in the world. But, there’s no reason to stop trying to make the web world a better place ;).
Stevie J.
June 24th, 2010 11:37 amActually, I believe most of the web design and programming is done by the servicemen and women themselves. When I was taking Maya classes back in 2000, there was an army guy there and he was being paid by the army to learn Maya so he can do animations for them…i.e., new tanks and explosions and such, simulations type.
I would cut these military designers some slack as I am sure they spend most of their day doing drills and training.
avianto
June 23rd, 2010 5:25 amAdd one, this is Indonesian Military website: http://www.tni.mil.id/
Peter
June 23rd, 2010 5:33 amIt would be more interesting to see a showcase of Military Recruitment Websites.
Legenda
June 23rd, 2010 5:39 amGreat article! The British and Finnish (my country!) seems to have the best websites. The Finnish Defence Forces even have a couple of RSS-feeds to the Finns, one with regular news and one that tells where they are training/shooting at the moment. And even if it’s split up in the Army, Navy, Air force and so on, they’re all on the same website. Something for the other countries to take learn from!
Fernando
June 23rd, 2010 5:39 amsaddly true. I’m from Argentina and i’m not glad to say that every page that belong to the government, or deppends on it, are very out of date. But, due to some research i’ve made a time ago, i’d notice that this is so because they have the same “designers” (if i can call them designers) from the 90′s. They are fulltime hired, and they answer to nobody. A disaster, endless loadings, overcharges, and what about cross-browsing…. forget about it! well, it works on IE6 however… but only on it…
a disaster and a shame
Pete Morley
June 23rd, 2010 5:41 amI see these websites as being a source of information, there’s no reason to get a marketing company involved and pay the tens of thousands to dress them up in a coat of gloss. Personally I’d rather the MOD, Army and British Navy spend more time and money investing in our current troops than throwing huge wads of cash at their already bloated advertising budget.
Edit: That was probably a little more political than I intended to get, but my point still stands.
Drew Clarke
June 24th, 2010 12:27 amWhy not take pride in all that you do?
Pete Morley
June 24th, 2010 4:04 amPride has nothing to do with fitting workload into budget restrictions and making sure money isn’t being wasted by ‘updating’ 10 year old websites so they look new and trendy amidst the sea of CSS galleries and design portfolios out there.
These sites should be functional with easy to update copy. They’re information websites.
theDOG
June 26th, 2010 3:48 pmI disagree that they are purely ‘information’ sites – they do have other objectives than simply serving information. I expect they want to attract new recruits for example.
kumar
June 23rd, 2010 5:48 am[Offtopic: .... Book #1 is Professional Web Design, 242 pages for just $9,90.] – wow, thats an EXPENSIVE book.
Luca
June 23rd, 2010 5:48 amIn fact, they mainly serve and help politicians corruption by oppressing innocents.
If they don’t have good sites, it’s just a good thing, so they fool less people.
Peace.
John
June 23rd, 2010 6:51 amAnd Americans murdered thousands in the Serbian War. I was actually near the orphanage when they bombarded it with their smart bombs. 100+ babies dead.
What now, should I not google anything anymore ?
If you follow your mentality, you shouldn’t just not visit websites, you should stop breathing. You are human, no ?
joshica
June 25th, 2010 5:53 pmI like you post. This is truth
nadine
June 23rd, 2010 5:52 am…the recruitment campaign webspecial of the swedish armed forces was pretty good:
http://forsvar.fileflat.com/english/
Huw
June 23rd, 2010 5:53 amGo to Google … Type in “zimbabwe police” and then click “pictures” and (if you have a strong stomach) look and see what you are dealing with in your article
How dare you refer to the thugs of the Mugbe and other dictatorship you and just say their web page design could be better
- Chinese Forces = Tiananmen massacre
- The Honduran overthrew the legal government last year
- The Chilian and Argentinian, murdered and tortured tens of thousands in the 70s
- Croatian and Serbian.. Have you forgotten the genocide a decade or so back ?
What next .. a review of pedophile porn site designs maybe?
I’ll give Smashing Mag a miss from now on!
Pete Morley
June 23rd, 2010 6:25 amAgree with you there.
haha
June 23rd, 2010 9:01 amSerbian and Croatian people did a genocide over Bosnian people, that’s not really a reason for having lame websites.
Matthew
June 23rd, 2010 11:52 pmThe person that designed these websites didn’t participate in the massacres you have just listed, this is a chance to learn from web designing faults and in my opinion just by mentioning those massacres in a comment box is a disgrace to the memory of the victims. this is about web design NOT politics.
Allie
June 24th, 2010 9:26 amAgreed.
robin
June 25th, 2010 7:24 amI totally agree with Huw!
This is an awful idea for an article, the author shows no sensitivity to the tragic and violent reality behind the face of ALL of the army marketing they’re commenting on here.
vollinfresse
June 23rd, 2010 5:56 amI would like to see some interactive games where you can control a Predator over Afghanistan for example.
azizbaba
June 23rd, 2010 5:58 amamazing work. Thanks for that article.
Bryant
June 23rd, 2010 6:02 amI have to say this article and its selections are kind of backwards. Some of the very same issues that the author says makes a website “bad” are repeated in the very same selections she calls “good”, which makes this whole thing a farce if you’re going to try to analyze these designs.
Frankly, I also question the validity of a self-proclaimed web design professional who didn’t even bother to make a unique design for her own blog.
Sharon
June 23rd, 2010 11:21 amYes based on her own work, I question the author’s credibility to critique too.
Hof
June 30th, 2010 12:23 amMaybe that’s why she narrowed the topic to “Military, Intelligence And Defense” websites, so that there would be no need to include her own site http://cameronchapman.com/
Bino
June 23rd, 2010 6:03 amCheck out for the French Navy recruitment website : http://etremarin.fr
Fernando
June 23rd, 2010 6:08 amI’m Argentinian, and i know better than most of you (probably) what happened in my country 40 years ago, but this has nothing to do with the post.
Do not mess the post topic with politic or crap like that. This whole blog it’s about design and web design, not politic, not government.
Try to focus on the topic please.
Good article, bad comments
Joshua Johnson
June 23rd, 2010 6:12 amGreat work Cameron. People absolutely need to see and study poor web design. Ugly site showcases can be more helpful than beautiful site galleries. Pay close attention designers!
Jeff
June 23rd, 2010 6:13 amHey,
Nice article, but I think the Canadian Forces website should have been mentioned in the good section:
http://www.forces.ca/
HTML: http://www.forces.ca/html/index.aspx?lang=en
flash: http://www.forces.ca/flash.aspx#/flash/en
HTML is simple/clean/sleek and very user friendly while the flash is fun and interactive… both user oriented…
let me know what you think!
thanks :)
LC
June 23rd, 2010 6:17 amThe Denmark and Finnish sites over the China one ? Odd …
Alvaro
June 23rd, 2010 6:23 amThis is the bolivian army site: http://www.ejercito.mil.bo/ isn’t on the list (but should be) :D
Greetings from Bolivia
JJ Nold
June 23rd, 2010 6:28 amThe US Air Force .com site is a little better showcase of design.
http://www.airforce.com/
One would think that with all the money the military pumps into commercials, their websites would look a little better. Limited budgets only go so far I suppose.
Liz
June 23rd, 2010 6:29 amUsually I’m a big supporter of Smashing Magazine, but in this case I must agree, what is the point of this article? Showing us poor web design… I could find plenty of poor web design on my own. Giving it a common theme of Military web sites doesn’t give it more of a point. There is nothing to learn from it here. Even the “good” sites aren’t very good.
I’m guessing in most of these cases, the internet is not the primary way that these organizations communicate to recruits / members, so good design isn’t a priority for them. So they put their resources into other areas.
It also seems like a rip off of that noupe article linked previously. Reading the comments on that article show it was unsuccessful, which makes me wonder why Smashing would even publish this article.
Navy SEALs
June 23rd, 2010 8:14 pmYou seem like someone who likes to be inspired. Here’s a link to the new Navy SEALs Website. I hope it fuels your imagination. It’s a hybrid site. Here’s how the bulk of it was done:
- Slideshow made using SlideshowPro with Director hosting
- Video editing done by one person inhouse
- Site design done by one person inhouse
- Photos of Navy SEALs done on a photo shot + from history archives. All photos are of Navy SEALs using the gear of their choice. Everything is authentic.
- Content area created using Adobe Flash Catalyst Beta 2 to combine text and slideshows.
- Modal box load on page load by Shadowbox.
- Center entire site on page load code courtesy of a great supporter of the Navy over at Wikipedia.
- Navigation design emulates “Smashing Magazine” see the article on “Speaking Block Navigation” at http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/02/26/navigation-menus-trends-and-examples/
Enjoy, download + share photos and videos. View the source code for Shadowbox on page load code and the center any page on page load code.
http://www.sealswcc.com
Alvaro
June 23rd, 2010 6:35 amAnd this is spain: http://www.policia.es/
horrible¡¡¡¡
Paul
June 23rd, 2010 7:01 amWow! And I thought the Canadian Government websites were bad, these are way worse. But still, Canada’s CLF 2.0 website design standard isn’t stellar.
Nice roundup there!
Tom
June 23rd, 2010 7:02 amInteresting !
You should have a look to the websites from France, I’m suprised there is none of them in this article :)
http://www.defense.gouv.fr/
http://www.defense.gouv.fr/terre/
http://www.defense.gouv.fr/gendarmerie/
http://www.impots.gouv.fr/portal/dgi/home?pageId=home&sfid=00
And so on…
But we also have nice websites of our politicians like http://nkm-blog.org/
T800
June 23rd, 2010 7:03 amfuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugly
hahahahaha
XD
At least Peru guys’ve put a jet plane pic.
Tim
June 23rd, 2010 7:21 amRather than a showcase, I think people would appreciate case studies a lot more. That is, select a handful of sites and then really analyze them. I think showcases such as this one should include conclusions/generalizations/trends in any case.
I haven’t read through the entire article, but the sites from developed countries generally look more professional than the ones from developing countries. Call it bias or whatever, but it’s true. Also, the sites with target audiences who are mostly young, male, and tech-savvy (e.g. US Army, US Marine Corps, NSA) look more cutting-edge. Their audiences probably spend a lot of time on the Web, so these organizations really would have to invest in how their sites look/work.
Marc
June 23rd, 2010 7:25 amAs a multimedia person who works for a government contract, I can really appreciate the fact that someone notices that things can get dated and that the envelope can be pushed more, while still feeling professional and well developed.
Thank you. Would agree with poster *Tim* on more analysis/case study model.
Again thank you!
Franco
June 23rd, 2010 7:35 amI think this is a nice showcase. You need to know that in most of the countries most of all in 3rd world countries in this showcase the internet is not for everyone, we have very important life and economics problems to stop and worry about the “looks” of a military web site design. Here the internet is very expensive to the home user and not many people is able to afford it, thats why the goverment among other things doesn´t think of a website or the internet as an efficient communication channel (at least in Argentina, where I´m from). Again nice showcase, this is the first time I see military web design of any kind.
Anna
June 23rd, 2010 7:37 amI can’t believe you included third world countries and/or countries that have undergone war/political upheaval etc in the past few years. Yea, good call, let’s mock those websites …..
Shampi
June 23rd, 2010 7:44 amYeah because it’s well known you need a lot of money to build a good website ^^
Shampi
June 23rd, 2010 7:43 amSuch a useless article.. seriously smashmag? If you don’t have anything to say exepting ‘ Hey look at that website it’s ugly’ just don’t say anything …
Dutch
June 23rd, 2010 8:04 amIndeed, this is useless and boring. I can’t believe that SM accepted such an article.
Jo
June 23rd, 2010 8:04 amWhat a waste of bandwidth, worst post I’ve seen on smashing – and I’ve been reading for a while
Ram
June 23rd, 2010 8:19 amThey use photoshop as a weapon just to kill designs
Bill Spencer
June 23rd, 2010 8:19 amAs the Chief of Web / Creative Director for the US Navy effort I would like to point out a few things that were left off the screen shot from the bottom of Navy.mil.
1. Webby Award Honoree 2008 – industry leader peer review judged
2. Thomas Jefferson Award 2008,2009,2010 (peer review award among the services)
3. Two Davey Awards 2009- industry peer reivew
4. Communicator Award 2010 – industry peer review
So I think something is a little different that you present it. Other things that have been said about Navy.mil in the last few years.
Brookings Institute – identified Navy.mil as a leader in using new ideas and concepts to communicate government information to its audience. They sited the “media port” as a great way to communicate and engage the end user – Sept 2007
US Navy Social Media Directory: A Great Idea
November 16th, 2009
http://blogs.gartner.com/andrea_dimaio/2009/11/16/navy-social-media-directory-a-great-idea/
Navy.mil rates an 82 – 84 for customer satisfaction via Foresee which places it behind only Social Security in the federal government and well above the industry average of 72.
This entire effort is created and manned by a minimal staff that keep a content management system and interface going as well as the development and deployment for special efforts like:
http://www.navy.mil/gwf
http://www.navy.mil/midway
http://www.navy.mil/moh
http://www.navy.mil/ussny
While Navy.mil is due to have some redesign done to it, after all it’s 3 years old, it still stands toe to toe with sites of similar content and reach. While the design to you might be stale because its been around for HALF of your total life experience in this field, it is still relevant and possess advanced human interaction design compared to most of the industry.
In the end most of these efforts that you gun down are utilitarian in function and design. They are created to provide large amounts of information in clusters. Some of these designers are overworked, underfunded, undermanned and have to manage the expectations of stakeholders that range from the age of 15 to 65.
The goal of government websites is not to entertain but to provide transparency and communicate critical information to its stakeholders, presenting the content in an engaging manner should be a critical goal but is not the core of what must be achieved to be a successful effort.
In the end its all about access to information.
Bill Spencer
Chief of Web / Creative Director Navy.mil
http://www.navy.mil
http://www.popedeflash.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/popedeflash
Rob Medlin
June 23rd, 2010 1:48 pm“In the end most of these efforts that you gun down are utilitarian in function and design. They are created to provide large amounts of information in clusters. Some of these designers are overworked, underfunded, undermanned and have to manage the expectations of stakeholders that range from the age of 15 to 65.”
As a designer in a company contracted to produce DoD websites and graphic work, I concur. With the military and non-military (civilian) health information sites, what might be viewed as beautiful/stunning/impressive here (on Smashing Magazine and to me personally) is, quite honestly, viewed by our clients as Fisher Price-looking and immature. As the gentleman stated, it is about access to information. Bear in mind these websites are used by persons within a wide range of education and experience. It is much more important to reach all of the users – even the ones on dial-up using IE6, of which, unfortunately, there is a much higher ratio of users in this particular group.
We also provide user support for military and civilian health education sites. In the early stages of working at my company, I was shocked that so many people didn’t understand what we take for granted as designers and developers. Working around the many issues of the inexperienced user, the iconoclast, and even the luddites who are all REQUIRED to get their CE via that military site you’ve created, was an education in itself.
Sometimes, designers aren’t allowed the luxury of designing for the rich and sophisticated user who “gets it.” Instead of simple lists of bad design that the client will have no interest in anyway (save for Bill Spencer), how about a piece directed towards that particular type of client to demonstrate how much more effective their site would be at disseminating information if ‘this,’ ‘this,’ or ‘this’ was implemented? It would help the designer in the trenches trying desperately to educate an entity much bigger than he/she.
Really. We’re exhausted over here.
Ramm
June 27th, 2010 7:55 amBut it’s ugly!
Ted Goas
June 23rd, 2010 8:20 amMy opinion has already been covered by some of the other readers, but this isn’t an article at all… it’s a list post… one that’s quite opinionated.
I enjoy Smashing and check out the other articles, but ones like these the periodically pop up shake my confidence in the site.
There isn’t much though put into any one example… maybe this topic would be more interesting if just a handful of these examples were focused on a bit more thoughtfully?
Mike
June 23rd, 2010 8:33 amWow…
I can’t believe some people on here. This was a post on poor web design, not an endorsement of any political state.
Also, if you hated the post so much, why bother reading through it?
Victor
June 23rd, 2010 8:46 amIt is strange that author not writed about Estonian Defence websites.
http://vk.kra.ee/ – Estonian Army Recruit Agency website – I think its very good work
http://www.mod.gov.ee/ – Estonian Ministry of Defence
But it is very good showcase.
Alec Smart
June 23rd, 2010 9:38 amI am surprised how such content is being showcased at SM. It is a poorly written article and some of the “good” websites are shockingly poor. Instead of concentrating on how to improve a website, you are talking about “screaming 90s” etc. That really doesn’t make much sense to me. I have nothing to learn from it. Instead you should showcase a website and talk about how you can improve it etc.
I wonder how so many found this article informative and fun. It is disheartening to see that so many users blindly follow the content being posted.
Sharon
June 23rd, 2010 11:23 am“Instead you should showcase a website and talk about how you can improve it etc.” – Thank you Alec. Well said. It’s very easy to just criticize.
Aravind
June 23rd, 2010 9:28 pmI totally agree with you Alec. Instead of criticizing they can concentrate on how to improve a website.
Bryant
June 23rd, 2010 10:50 pmYou’re right, but she probably didn’t because she doesn’t know how to actually provide constructive criticism… much less how to improve these sites.
As I noted above, the author claims to be a design professional, yet she uses a wordpress template for her blog…
Maybe she’s afraid of having her own designs criticized….
Raphael
June 23rd, 2010 9:40 am“Members of military and intelligence forces around the world risk their lives daily to defend their countries and assist in peacekeeping and aid missions both at home and abroad. The men and women who make up the world’s defense forces make sacrifices that most civilians wouldn’t consider to serve their countries.”
I cant believe it, these two first sentences made almost never read smashing magazine again. Has the author of this statement for one second really dared to look what is happening in the so calles “peace keeping opeartions” !?
Please educate yourself and watch a few testimonials from veterans from the Iraq war for example.
And pleas no more of these kind of posts on smashingmagazine.com anymore.
Thank you.
christopher
June 30th, 2010 1:22 am“Please educate yourself and watch a few testimonials from veterans from the Iraq war for example.”
Please educate yourself and not rely solely on anti-military propaganda.
“Members of military and intelligence forces around the world risk their lives daily to defend their countries and assist in peacekeeping and aid missions both at home and abroad. The men and women who make up the world’s defense forces make sacrifices that most civilians wouldn’t consider to serve their countries.”
Sounds about right too me.
Yes, I am a veteran.
When you are a veteran maybe your opinion on these issue will have some value.
Oh yeah, weak article SM, is the editor-in-chief on vacation?
Tomi
June 23rd, 2010 9:44 amYou should add this site to the list of Argentina
http://www.policiafederal.gov.ar/
Andrey Andrade
June 23rd, 2010 10:04 amSometimes is important to take a look at ugly websites to learn what things we don’t have to do.
Cameron, I like your article.
Gabe
June 23rd, 2010 11:09 amHow often should a website’s design be updated then? Since all designs become outdated sooner or later.
Peter J. Hart
June 23rd, 2010 12:05 pmClearly these screenshots were made using Internet Explorer.
Dagobert
June 23rd, 2010 12:28 pmdated is not bad, hard to use is.
Blaze
June 23rd, 2010 12:43 pmDefence Command Denmark is a good site? Really?!
Tim
June 23rd, 2010 1:05 pmI appreciate this article.
A big part of being a good web designer is understanding what doesn’t work as well as what does.
Thanks.
Navy SEALs
June 23rd, 2010 1:12 pmWe do.
http://sealswcc.com/
eclaw
June 24th, 2010 12:47 amHooyah! :P Looks nice.
But the page performance sucks, the navigation doesn’t match the rest of the design at all and is broken and there’s a horizontal scrollbar!?
Why does the main focus seem to be a slideshow? That’s what SEALs are about?
Navy SEALs
June 24th, 2010 6:19 amThanks for the feedback. Here’s an explanation. Performance has taken a hit ever since we experimented with Flash Catalyst and 3D imagery. SEAL man was originally a 2D image. He was made 3D using After Effects. His load size is 2.5 megs. Eventually he’ll have to loose his animation. Right now it’s just an experiment to push the envelope using 3D imagery on the site.
The navigation was inspired by Smashing Magazine and their article on the trend toward “Speaking Blocks” navigation.
The site was designed for large monitors and small. Small monitors are found on military bases. Large monitors are used by the potential SEAL candidates we are interested in. What’s important to note is that all content falls within the range viewable on a 17″ monitor yet allows for great visual impact when viewed on a 22″ or larger monitor. Even more, the entire site centers itself on any browser. A very cool feature. Compliments of a very cool guy at Wikipedia.
The site features a slideshow and videos for visual impact. SEALs prefer to remain, for lack of a better word, mysterious. Using slideshows and videos is how that mystery is revealed to the general public. This imagery resonates with high potential SEAL candidates. In order to come up with the right imagery for the site, we asked SEAL candidates [ students of the Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School ], SEAL officers and SEALs what they thought?
Thanks again for your comments. They will help us on a go forward basis.
http://sealswcc.com
MattSepeta
June 24th, 2010 8:46 amVERY interesting. Thanks for the link and the insight into the 3d aspect!
Really?
June 26th, 2010 3:06 amThis site puts up a good laugh and begs the question: Why would a spec-op club need a public recruitment website?
The majority of the candidates for JSOC are invitation-only types. This site seems pointless even as the intention seems noble. The videos are training videos taken by the public affair crew, reflecting zero truth to the actual missions.
And another thing: Any SEAL or D-boy would tell you, we got no time looking at websites. Besides, the most comprehensive infosys used by the DOD and JSOC are offline and isolated from the public. We’re just that practical and free of vanity.
Jason
June 28th, 2010 9:30 pmAfter looking into the SOF community, you would realize that they are NOT invite only. I’ve been following the SEALS and they are really trying to get more people recruited into BUD/S training. By giving out a glimpse of what the training is like, more candidates are becoming better prepared both mentally and physically. It also shows the type of training they do. Someone who has no idea what to expect might not want to try it out even though they could possibly be a better mentally prepared candidate. That in return decreases the washout rate and stops wasting money.
Also the site is loaded with proper exercises as well as a workout guide to follow as well as ways to prevent injury. Sure no SEAL would need that site, but if you are looking into the program it gives you a hell of a lot more info than the navy site does.
Navy SEALs
June 29th, 2010 6:31 amJason,
Your comments were very accurate and astute. The Naval Special Warfare Command Recruiting Directorate is charged with identifying high quality SEAL candidates, making them aware of Naval Special Warfare opportunities, and for those who are interested, assisting them through the accession process. The Website is a tool to help those who choose to use it.
We’re glad you enjoyed the photos and videos. All photos and videos can be freely downloaded and shared. All photos and videos are hi-rez. Some of which are quite large. We left them this way because we wanted everyone to have them in their highest quality form. The hi-rez videos can be downloaded in the following formats:
1. Quicktime
2. Windows
3. iPhone/mobile
4. H.264/MPEG4
We welcome you to check out the “Official U.S. Navy SEAL Training Forum.” A great place to meet others like yourself.
LINK: http://sealswcc.com/forum/
Hooyah!
Naval Special Warfare Command Recruiting Directorate
jared
June 24th, 2010 10:34 amFlash sites are pointless
niccol
June 23rd, 2010 1:16 pmgosh that is really just the most ridiculous article I have read on Smashing Magazine. I hope it isn’t part of a series. I don’t think I could take the meaningless babble about whether the Estonian tax office website is 6 or 7 years out of date in its styling.
Get a life.
And as a general rule it is a bad idea to tell people who have a good supply of weapons that their websites suck.
Mohawk Kellye
June 23rd, 2010 1:45 pmWhen did it become a general rule that some country that would probably never see this site (I mean seriously, if they were reading ANYTHING on this site they’d probably not have such a sub par website) can’t be mentioned on a list of bad website designs? A country isn’t going to launch and attack on a random person for saying their defense websites suck. Many of these countries with shitty websites seem to be ones that may not be able to afford or care about having something state-of-the art, which is why it sucks in the first place. Maybe if you said to them “A thousand dicks in your religion” would they care!
Mohawk Kellye
June 23rd, 2010 1:40 pmI found this kinda hilarious. Notice how many of the bad ones were Arabic? When I see crappy sites like this, it makes me want to give them at least a simple functional template for super cheap because I feel so sorry for them and their terrible taste/eye for design and functionality.
Dutch
June 23rd, 2010 2:52 pmDude, are you an Arab-hater? What has being Arabic to do with this? There are 3 sites from Arabic countries that are ‘bad’… 3 out of 50 (or more)… so what are you trying to say?
Mohawk Kellye
June 24th, 2010 8:19 amI’m not an Arab hater. Relax.
Pete Morley
June 24th, 2010 2:13 amHere you go sweetcheeks. Open your mind and stop being so prejudice:
arabiancss.com
Mohawk Kellye
June 24th, 2010 8:20 am1. Don’t call me sweetcheeks.
2. I’m not prejudice. It just seemed like many of the sites that were bad had some form of Middle Eastern language written on it it.
Jae Xavier
June 23rd, 2010 1:42 pmI’ve done business with the defense and intelligence sector. They area very conservative group.
Don’t count on them to follow trends that are less than a year old.
Mohawk Kellye
June 23rd, 2010 1:46 pmAnd for the record, the Philippines Marine Corps. site is HILARIOUS! But really, I feel like more could’ve been said about these sites if there was going to be such a long list of bad ones. Many of them seem to be 3rd world or otherwise struggling countries.
me
June 23rd, 2010 2:49 pmTo be completely honest with you, your site doesn’t look any more cutting-edge. Except maybe for the ad cluttering.
pupsick11
June 23rd, 2010 6:11 pmWhoever created this list never looked at the real United States Navy website, its http://www.navy.com/navy/. Navy.mil is for internal use only.
Prez
June 23rd, 2010 6:41 pmI found this interesting because where I work we win a large number of government and pseudo government work (including Defense & Military work). Most of the time we are very limited in what we can design both front and back end wise. It can a very controlled process too in that there are usually many stakeholders, standards and a large market demographic to consider and appease – 95% of the time the sites aren’t anything interesting to look, rather more about the ease of use and accessing content which in reality is first and foremost the most critical function.
And before anyone comes on here stating a good designer would rise above this… the real deal is this sometimes our hands are tied (very tight) and we can’t do anything about it – when a large govt client has to adhere to strict guidelines, protocol and so forth then a lot of the design will unfortunately suffer in my experience. That’s no reflection on the developer/designer either – usually more to do with a lot of red tape.
Keep up the good work SM.
Dave
June 23rd, 2010 7:58 pmYeah let’s use a whole article to rip on 3rd world military websites. SM used to be cool… what happened?
Faruz
June 23rd, 2010 8:12 pmWhat about IDF? http://www.idf.il ?
jean
June 23rd, 2010 11:35 pmOk, this was my last read from smashing magazine, I have removed your feed from my list. I felt the need to tell. Not only in the past 6 month or so, the articles quality went down. We then started to have opinion columns. I do not care about random unknown and wannabe authors opinion, I “want” objective, useful information, and inspiring topics that I can learn and grow from, and on top of that, I “want” this deliver in the most positive way, that is: show us good stuff.
Obviously, something bad happened internaly at smashing magazine: Stop polluting the web, your task and effort should focus on improving on the web content, not the opposite.
You failed
Matthew
June 24th, 2010 12:01 amhah polluting the web? go to pen island .com and tell me if you still think that smashing magazine is still polluting the web.
David
June 23rd, 2010 11:42 pmI know smashingmagazine having hard times about financial problems. But this is not an excuse for such crap articles. Look at the articles that you have posted in the last month. Not one of them worth reading.
Hannes
June 24th, 2010 12:39 amnice article, but I don’t agree with the mention that a boring (military) site is a bad thing, bad design yes, but honestly – the more boring the page of my country’s military is, the happier I am
Luca
June 24th, 2010 12:55 amYes, definitely. The more boring and bad designed these kind of websites are, the better.
You SM didn’t have to public such an article! You have just blessed these sites with more audience for a while. They didn’t deserve it. You gave them visibility while they definitely should not be visible, maybe not exist.
If we’re artists, and I think we are, we all should believe in peace and fight for it. No weapons, no war.
Dan-E
June 24th, 2010 1:56 amDutch Airforce:
http://www.luchtmachtbase-x.nl/main.php#app=2f14&e9ba-location=mainbaseview