Silberbauer Says:

Cologne Bonn Airport’s tagline is “So Simple”. Its web site is anything but. The extreme abuse of icons and the total absence of photos and decent labelling makes the site a nightmare to use. This is reeaal bad communication.

Example: This icon means “Flights Today” when on the frontpage, but on the page Transport Info it means Aviation Businesses. When you move your mouse over it it turns into a house…?

Have a look at Transport Info yourself and try to guess what the icons mean. Now move your mouse over the icons (annoying dhtml popups aren’t they?) Do the icons make sense? Absolutely not. It’s like the designer ran out of clipart on the frontpage and simply decided to use the same icons over and over again.Furthermore, none of the icons are explained by text labels making the whole site a guessing game. And why on earth does the plane turn into a house on mouseover?

This means “Baggage Retrieval”, right? No – on the Transport Info page this means “Late Night Check In”, but on the frontpage the Late Night Check In icon is a crescent moon.

How about this “menu” – So simple, is it?

Stupid icons combined into retro-hieroglyphs: Car + Key = Rental Car. Car + house = Road Routes … ? God. Someone get an ancient Egyptian to translate.

I see three lessons to be learned from this site:

1. Kill your darlings. The retro-icons-galore idea might have seemed nice at the start but it doesn’t stand the distance.
2. Icons need text labels.
3. A website needs to connect to reality somehow. Photos of places and human beings do that. This particular website is about an airport – the airport is the product. Show us the freakin’ airport then, don’t hide it behind icons.