Erowid is an American organisation set on providing a reliable source of non-judgmental information on everything from psychoactive plants to chemicals and any related issues. The information is provided by academic, medical and experimental experts aiming to truthfully advise the public on mind altering substances and their effects. With the option of being able to share your experiences through the site Erowid endeavor to build a factual historical archive of an otherwise illusive culture.
Despite the inspirational ethos and informative pages the overall design of the site is disappointing. The home page is an interesting collection of images acting as links to related pages, but these laid over the image of the plant create too much visual noise and make the text links hard to spot initially.
The first page through the site is the "Plant and Drugs" link. This takes you through to the "psychoactive vault" where you are met by not only a out of place title font but also a number of search engines and links to reams of information. This page impressed me not only for the volume of information available but also for its ease in navigation with clear categories. Scroll down and you'll find advice on different aspects around drug taking from dosage and law to family and well-being.
As far as the rest of the site goes sifting through the pages there were no problems with navigation. Everything is spaced clearly and although I would say the font is half a point or so too thick in places it's still easy to read. There is a lot that could be done with the alignment of text on certain pages that would help the flow of the site both visually and with getting certain information or request across.
As much as I appreciate this site it's far from my idea of professional design and that said I could forgive the dodgy text placements and the clashing font colours but discovering the library page was too much. The links appear scattered and unbalanced, the combination of colours is almost vomit inducing and the quirky greek-esk historical font style "Lithos Pro" might speak to the inner hippy but used only on this page and with a random layout it's really inconsistent and too decretive.
So yes I would recommend this site, but only for it’s informative content and we'll have to leave the aesthetics out of it.
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