GOOD magazine

http://www.goodmagazine.com/

I went to this "green" fashion show this weekend, and one of the booths was good magazine. So I thought that I would take this opportunity to find out more about Good Magazine through its website.

Intended Audience:
Twenty somethings interested in their carbon foot print, global warming, politics, consumerism, the arts and carbon alternative lifestyles. Non-SUV drivers.

Usefulness of Content:
From browsing through the website I found the writing to be fairly passionate and interesting but the way it is displayed to the user seems to assume that you already know something about the organization.
This is frustrating to me because the name itself is obtuse and hard to understand. After first seeing their products (at the fashion show), I felt like there was a big inside hipster joke being played at the fashion show and I was the only one not in on it.
Upon reflection I think the content is written to spark conversation and promote different ways of living in the modern world. The magazine title itself is made to spark the average joe's curiosity "what is good magazine?"

However, I think it is fool hardy for any non profit to be hard to understand (on purpose) because they are often small and run on show string budgets.
I found the content on the Good Magazine website very hard to understand.

Ease of Navigation:
Navigational elements listed on the website are numbered but it is difficult to understand what the purpose of ordering these pages was. At first I thought this was a metaphor based navigation design where the pages of the web content were numbered like the pages of a regular magazine. If this is what the web designers intended, it wasn't very successful.

Consistency of Design:
The design is very "urban outfitters" in its color and design philosophy. The rainbow color and smallish serif font are used in concert through out the site. Next the designers chose a sans serif font for the header information. This is unconventional which can be good, however in this application I do not think it is good. Navigating away from the homepage the are fewer pictures and more black and white text. This is also not used to its greatest advantage. I like the low-fi design concept with simple html but the is much more that should have been done to make this page more usable. For example, making the body text sans serif and larger, choosing a simple color scheme and making the navigation as un-order-lists with larger menus.