Which is which?

There’s been plenty of fun made on the intertubes of the GOP relaunch of their site. Marc Ambinder gave us 10 reasons why the site was ‘fizzlin’;’ Greg Saunders at The Talent Show rounded up all the banner images, which gives us some insight into the demographics the party is going after; Sam Stein at the HuffPo picked apart the GOP’s insistence that Jackie Robinson is a Republican hero; Christopher Orr at The New Republic notes the silliness of the updated “future leaders” page; and a few laughs were had over Michael Steele’s inaugural post on his (renamed) blog in which he informed us that the internet ‘has been around for a while, now.”

Today I showed a (quite conservative) web geek coworker the new GOP site. After he recovered from seeing the insanely bright red, he took screen caps of both GOP.com and Democrats.org, desaturated them, deleted all identifying info, and put them next to one another.

screengrab-196

screengrab-197

The aesthetic similarities are unsurprising. I don’t think it’s just a case of the RNC ripping off the DNC (which itself ripped off BarackObama.com). Pale stars and suggestions of stripes are just the trendy Web 2.0 way of saying “USA.” What is surprising, sorta, is the fact that when the identifying information is removed from each site, I really couldn’t tell the difference between the two.

In the words of my coworker: “Two parties, no color, no self-identification, just rhetoric.”

Latest posts by Shani (see all)

  • Molly

    I dont know–I think the interface on the Democrats.org site is better–what is up with the confusing GOP feed on the side? And the information extends past the fold, which isn’t really mobile-friendly (or small monitor-friendly) design…