Because it is freshest in my mind, I will review my group’s shoe website – Simplicity shoes.

I feel that Simplicity Shoes was successful in many areas. The site contains a good amount of balance. Colors balance out the page, for example. The homepage seems to be aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Almost everything is lined up to avoid distracting gaps or hanging corners. Of course, there is always room for improvement. I wish the navigation lined up with the end of our header image, and I wish the Facebook and Twitter icons lined up with the right side of the page. Going back to the navigation, I wish the buttons were smaller to match the bottom navigation.

In terms of unity, I think our site is fairly successful. Our colors are uniform, our type is mostly uniform (except for the head title and price of the women’s and men’s pages), and our photography is both uniform and cohesive. The photography also matches the feel of the site we were going for – simple, and clean. An off white background keeps it simple, but not too “classy” looking.

I also think our group did a good job of using emphasis within our site. However, the top navigation bar could have probably used a bit more emphasis (but then again, maybe it works because it is so big). But we did put the biggest emphasis on what was most important – our product. With the site’s colors and theme being a bit more subdued, the photos pop off the page in terms of color and simplicity.

The layout plays a HUGE part in how the site is perceived by onlookers. Our homepage, to me, feels modern, yet simple (which is what we were going for). The lookbook and about us pages also feel fairly modern, as do the women’s and men’s pages. I do think they could be a little bit more consistent in terms of spacing, font, and color usage, but overall (for a beginner class) I like the overall finished product. I do wish we would have pushed it a little farther, though.

I have touched on color in the pervious few paragraphs, but I want to emphasize again my love for the color palette we chose – mostly grays, blacks, and whites with pops of color in the pictures of the shoes (and Facebook and Twitter icons). I feel as though the color scheme was one of the most successful portions of our website.

In terms of texture – we did not have too much texture throughout our site, except for our background – which definitely helped. Originally we were going to go with a simple gray or black background, but I am happy that we chose to go with a subtle, dark background. It makes the page pop a little bit more. Though a plain color may have been technically more “simple,” the textured background’s subtleness adds to the overall theme in a very different way than I thought it would.

Navigation. Kelly and Brady absolutely killed the navigation (in the most awesome sense of the word) ! Again, going into this site not knowing much about navigation, I think they did superb. Especially for the women’s, men’s, and lookbook pages. Everything seems so intricately linked together, and I think it turned out great. However, I wish we had some sort of breadcrumbing to help designate exactly where a person is on the site. Right now, if you are on a particular page, it’s hard to tell exactly where you are on the site. However, the top navigation definitely helps a user find his or her way back to where he or she wants to be.

Overall, I think our site is very effective. The use of colors, unity, balance, emphasis, layout, and navigation all form together to create a site that is cohesive and interesting to look at. However, there are many improvements that could be made. There are many things that I wanted to do that I couldn’t figure out. But all in all, I know that we all worked extremely hard on the site – and for an intro class, I would say it is pretty sweet.

As a side note, I feel as though this project taught me a lot. Doing a multipage site has given me much more insight into how much work goes into sites that I visit everyday. I cannot imagine how many hours have been put into sites like Facebook, Gmail, and Google. Though it was so incredibly frustrating at times, I have found that facing a problem and pushing through it instead of moving past it without trying has been the best way to learn in this class. Looking back, I wish I would have pushed myself a bit more to do things that I was uncomfortable with. But I have many more web classes left, and I am sure I will have MANY more opportunities to learn even more in the near future.