For the final monthly review I did a website for the restaurant Mad Mex http://www.madmex.com/ . This restaurant is related to the final project because it is a fusion restaurant that has American food mixed with Mexican, Southeast Asian, and Spanish.  In The Principles of Beautiful Web Design texture is said to be “anything that gives a distinctive appearance or feel to the surface of a design or object” Mad Mex’s website is very minimal at doing that. The page does have boxes separating sections with different colors, and there is also a slide show that shows two pictures, besides that there isn’t much to say about the texture of this site, it is very lacking. On page 111 of The Principles of Beautiful Wed Design there is an example of a minimal textured page, John Gruber’s Daring Fireball site. Mad Mex is not even that, they have more than this website but less than a nicely textured page.  On john Gruber’s website he has removed all distractions that are unnecessary so you have to focus on the writing. On my groups final website Knight’s Sombrero we proved a lot of texture with our flag that gives off the feeling that it is moving.

When looking at the color of Mad Mex’s website, you get this laid back Mexican feel. The green, red, and white colors in general are all the colors of the Mexican flag. The colors the website uses isn’t as bright as the Mexican flag though, so that is where the more laid back feel comes in to play. When comparing The Knight’s Sombrero and Mad Mex, the Knight’s Sombrero does have a darker color scheme like Mad Mex but Knight Sombrero pops out more at the viewer instead of giving the laid back feel.

Navigation is always a key element to have done right when creating a website. The book Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug says on page 60 that the website needs to have their navigation in a standard place where the viewer can locate them quickly with a minimum effort put forth. Also having the navigation distinguished from the rest of the page will help viewers find the navigation with minimum effort. Mad Mex does have their tabs for their other pages in a good location that doesn’t have the viewer looking all over the page for. The only problem I find with the navigation is that the letters are colored just a few shades lighter then what their background color is. This makes the words pop out the the viewer less. If the website did not have their navigation at the top in an obvious place for viewers to find then because of the color, the words would be lost and so would the viewer. In the Knight’s Sombrero website the words are big and readable, and are also located around the central item, the flag. This provides the viewer with and easy time finding where to go and what to click on.

Amy Shubilla, Final Monthly review