Design Behind the St. Louis Zoo

The St. Louis Zoo has so many great aspects. It is free to the public, has a wide variety of animals and attractions for visitor entertainment and the things they do sell there are pretty affordable. However, although all of those aspects are what has shaped the St. Louis Zoo to be one of the best in the country, I would like to discuss the graphic design behind the St. Louis Zoo and how great of a job they do with that. The website has some really great features that I would like to point out. Their map that guides visitors through the Zoo is also well done and very detailed.

If you visit the St. Louis Zoo website fairly often, you will notice that the color of the site changes as well as the photo of the animal. I think this is a great use of symbolism. I’m sure when they were designing this site they wanted a way to show off all of the things they have to offer without cluttering the site, and they figured out a simple and effective way to go about this. The featured animal and the colors change, but everything else stays in the same place, allowing easy usability. I bet they had the opportunity to go with a very detailed and decorated site, but they chose to think of the users and how to get them the answers and information they need as easily as possible. This is why I believe creating it in such a clean style and layout was a smart decision.

The map also uses color coordination, making it easy to decifer which section is which, since they are divided by what animal is in each area. I was curious to see what other zoo maps looked like, so I looked up the San Diego Zoo map, and although the details are very nice and the illustrations are extremely well done, I couldn’t help but think that as far as usability goes, the St. Louis Zoo map was a little easier to follow. If you’d like to com- pare the two yourself, please visit the sites below and let us know if you agree or disagree and if you end up finding any other zoo maps that are even more user friendly and well designed than these two.

http://www.stlzoo.org/downloads/STLZooMap2010.pdf http://www.sandiegozoo.org/zoo/zoo_map

Written By: Jen Ebenrick