The Los Angeles Crimes Published by Unknown - On 4:55 PM - This post haved 0 comments

The Los Angeles Times website is in some serious need of artistic and creative intervention. The website is sparse, unimaginative and boring. So boring, that it is almost unlawful, and a crime. One would think that since this is an online website, more features and design would be implemented-things that would not otherwise be possible in a print edition. But in this case, the creativity seems to be displayed in their print versions.

On the homepage, there is little dominant art aside from the one featured picture which does not, at least, today, have any sort of action or interest.

The rest of the images or graphics lack any kind of artistic or informative context. The layout, although it is very clean, is very simple with just visuals and black and white text. There isn't even any kind of movement to the page, whether it be a slide show or a simple excerpt from a story while hovering over the title.

While it is easy for me to criticize the simplicity of the site, this could be entirely intentional for the times.

It is no secret that printed newspapers are struggling financially, and perhaps in order to lure and entice readers to keep or buy subscriptions to the L.A. times, they keep their online material plain, while their printed editions are much more visual and alluring.


One interesting feature of the webpage is offered at the very bottom of the homepage. The reader is able to download a PDF version of the daily front page only. While it may allow access to see the real visuals and access of the print version, it doesn't give the reader any real push to purchase a physical subscription to the paper.