For my final monthly review, I decided to focus on the Frye Company site to evaluate and compare to my group’s site, San Fran Kicks. One thing that stands out of Frye’s site and is something we chose to adapt to our site is the use of subtle colors and textures coupled with large images that can speak for themselves. Frye does this with full screen width images of models wearing the products in eloquently designed settings. Text is then super imposed over these images to highlight products and special offers. As you drill down into sub pages, however, the Frye site reverts back to more traditional grid based layouts.

Color wise, the Frye site is very subdued aside from the images. The sites text and header is composed entirely from black and shades of brown that combine to give it an earthy, rustic tone that generally matches it’s products. San Fran Kicks, on the other hand, uses mainly black and white with an orange for accent the more modern, active type of shoe we are selling.

The navigation on Frye is one area I think could use some work. I feel it tries to do too much without properly separating areas. Customer options, information about the company, and product navigation are all stacked on top of each other in horizontal nav bars that don’t follow any specific grid from one to the next. That being said, it does provide links to a ton of content in a relatively small amount of screen space. San Fran Kicks, on the other hand, does slightly less but more clearly with its navigation. It features only two horizontal nav bars, one for customer info and the about page, and one for product categories. The product one is, as it should be, much more prominent and draws the users’ eyes. The other nav bar is kept to a corner where it can be seen by any user seeking it but doesn’t interfere with the balance of the layout in any way.

One area where I think the two sites are rather similar is texture, especially when it comes to shape. Both sites use hard lines with only occasional shadowing to make sharp squares and rectangles to form there layouts. This does different things to different styles. For instance, in Frye, this layout design perpetuates the bold, rustic, almost regal design of the site, especially combined with the subtle rough grainy background texture. The San Fran Kicks however, these hard shapes emphasize the clean, sharp design used.

Overall I think Frye has a stronger aesthetic. The design never seems unsure of itself as San Fran Kicks does at times. On the other hand, San Fran Kicks does a better job of guiding the user around the site. The cleaner design and more simplistic navigation means the user is never lost when they just want to look at shoes.