That said, this site just lacks the appeal to me. The rickroll is cute, but it just underlines a website style which feels a bit unserious, and while I certainly think this sort of thing shouldn’t be dry and depressing, it does sort of undercut it (especially considering the privacy popup is full-screen on mobile, which is a design no-no in my eyes).
As much as I hate to say it, the best course of action is to lean into rhetoric on key data points, like the infamous “£350m to NHS” on the side of a bus. While the site clearly feels like a project of serious passion, it feels like it lacks any punchiness, any meaningful slogans, any real impetus. “We want our star back” as a slogan implies to me that this site’s focus is preaching to the converted, which will at best put people off and at worst distract people from ways they can actually encourage better UK-EU relations.
This isn’t something that will even be on the table for likely a good general election or three, but even still, it feels like a focus on figures with a minimalist style would be a better approach.
While Don’t Pay UK [1] sort of had a rough time, you can’t deny their website and approach to messaging is quite appealing, probably because they’ve been taking notes from the Civil Service’s own excellent design style for the gov.uk site [2]. Then it’s a case of re-injecting a bit of flair into the style, star-based or otherwise, rather than going all in on CSS animations that undercut the message.