How to organize a text-heavy site?

May 21, 2012 8:43 AM

Looking for examples of well-designed text-heavy websites.

I need examples of sites that handle lots of text well. I'm working on a school website that has a ton of info to organize and present. The site is built on Wordpress. I'm not in charge of what the site is built on and decisions like that. For instance, I can't change the template structure, since the site I work on is part of the larger school system and everything kind of has to look the same.

But, anyway, I think the template is fine. It's just that all the text info was dumped in, with a couple of bullet-point lists and tables (which WP hates) to organize things. My job is to basically untangle the mess of text and make the site look clean and easy to use. I'm going to add in some images to break things up a bit, but I'm looking for more ideas.

Any suggestions of sites that do this well? I'm looking at other school's sites, but I'm not impressed by them, tbh.

Thanks!!

posted by joyeuxamelie to technology (4 answers total)

Metafilter.
Wikipedia.
posted by Reverend John at 10:19 AM on May 21, 2012

I think A List Apart does a fairly good job at making their text-heavy articles easier to read with block quotes, headers, font changes etc.
posted by xqwzts at 10:23 AM on May 21, 2012

I think your best bet is magazines and newspapers that frequently produce long-form journalism. I'd start at longform.org for inspiration.

Also I think The Verge has the best article page on the web. See an example here.

I'm somewhat obsessed over the design of text on a page, so feel free to drop me a line if you'd like additional thoughts.
posted by Blandanomics at 10:24 AM on May 21, 2012

• Contents Magazine
• Information Architects (see the blog posts)
• Bobulate
• Jason Santa Maria (go back and check out the Candygrams)
• Many of the new NPR blogs such as Krulwich Wonders are getting nice typographic heirarchies as well (the NPR design team has been on a New International Typographic Style kick for the last couple years and I love it).
• Frank Chimero's blog
• The Boston Globe redesign is tremendously good

My general suggestion is start with a good typographic scale and work from there.
posted by thebestsophist at 11:36 AM on May 21, 2012 [1 favorite]