The Internet — A regional website celebrating the accomplishments of the Jefferson State Militia has received the prestigious “Layout of the Year Award” from the Academy of Professional Web Designers or APWD. The Jurisdiction of the Jefferson State Militia website, located at www.jeffersonstatemilitia.com, was nominated last year for its innovative design and faced stiff competition from popular conservative news-aggregator DrudgeReport.com and relative newcomer ‘Sup Bowie, a David Bowie fan page, which came in number 2 and 3 respectively.
“Like we do every year,” said Director May Pang from the APWD headquarters in San Francisco. “We spent weeks combing through the thousands of nominations. And there was some stiff competition. We found Jefferson State Militia refreshingly simpleminded and boorish. I mean, you wouldn’t believe the number of Parallax websites we had to endure. What a bunch of pretentious crap.”
APWD has been running the contest for over 15 years and has several criteria it considers when choosing a winner.
- Accessibility: How easy is it to navigate the site?
- Imaging: How well do images on the site convey the website’s purpose?
- Freshness: How “fresh” is the site?
- Speed/Performance: How fast does the site load relative to getting its “first byte of the message to the user?”
- Cliche Avoidance: Does the website avoid trendy crap like Parallax gimmicks?
- Animal inclusion: Does the site contain a lot of cat or wolf pictures?
According to Ms. Pang, the Jefferson State Militia page exceeded all of these standards and, in many ways, turned the web design paradigm on its head.
“The Jefferson State Militia is what we’re hoping to see more of in the future,” continued Ms. Pang. “Simple. Clear. Easy to understand stock footage probably stolen from other websites. All that. There’s just too much technology nowadays. The Jefferson State Militia knows how to party like it’s 1995, as a manner of speaking. Its mix of Christian Fundamentalism and quasi-Jeffersonian state insurrection was refreshing.”
Calls and emails to the website’s proprietor were both not returned.
