Sports teams’ Web sites, in general, are usually really, really, bad. Hell – most sports design in general is pretty horrific. So when I ran across the Manchester City professional soccer team’s site, I was blown away. Taking into consideration the design of other sports sites and the vast amount of content these sites tend to have, this may be one of the best Web sites I’ve ever seen.
One advantage the designers had to be thankful for was the classic logo/identity of the team. There are no macho, 3-D, metallic, embossed, roided-out logos here, just a classic old-school shield. The site doesn’t use every new flash plugin, or jQuery script either – just a smart, clean, bold and confident aesthetic. The content is handled beautifully. The navigation is easy to jump around, and each thing is in its proper place without overcrowding pages with unrelated stuff. No overwhelming screens full of 80+ links without rhyme or reason here.
The site contains large high-quality photography as the focal point with bold “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” Helvetica throughout. The ‘look’ is remarkably thorough and doesn’t break stride regardless of content. Player rosters, statistic tables, videos, shop, tickets are all executed equally well and nothing feels anomalous.
See more screenshots after the jump and check out the live Manchester City site at www.mcfc.co.uk.
(via NotForPaper)
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