The One Page Website I chose to explore was a website that promoted a new single ‘Glimmerman’ by a Hip Hop artist named Asaph. http://glimmerman.wetu.co.zw/
The website includes the ability to download the song, read the lyrics, share it to Twitter or Facebook, and includes a short bio of the artist himself.
The website uses yellow and white text to contrast the dark background. Everything that is clickable is either white or yellow and can easily be seen by the navigator. It uses darkness to create negative space that adds emphasis to the text and an image of a person in the center.
The website involves no scrolling. It fits completely on the page and is scanned only by the eyes and is not a mouse or virtual navigation. The color makes the website easy to scan because it is so easy to see as the yellow and white stand out from the black background. It is very interesting how the site uses value to create emphasis towards certain words or other items. It is also interesting how much negative space there is. It may have been better to fill more of this space.
Even though this website is overall visually pleasing, it is not a good website. Why is this the case? It makes me think! The website leaves too many questions in my opinion. Beyond simply downloading or playing the song, it was ineffective. There are specifically two icons that are clickable, but when I clicked on them I had no idea where I was going. For example, a checkout on an e-commerce website has an image of a shopping cart that says “cart” underneath it. This website contained the lyrics to the artist’s new song, but it was so small that you might miss it, and even if you did see it, it looked like a piece of paper that was slightly folded at the top. This meant absolutely nothing to me, and I would assume the average browser. If it weren’t for me investigating this page for the assignment I wouldn’t have even clicked on it.
There was also an icon on the bottom right hand corner that was a big letter “W” in a circle. This icon also means absolutely nothing to me either. It ended up being a short description as to who Asaph was. I also wouldn’t have looked at this either if it weren’t for the sake of this review. The ability to share to Facebook and Twitter was also offhandedly mentioned in the bottom left hand corner.
Overall, the idea of the website was good, but it was poorly executed. The site is very visually pleasing and interesting, but lacks the practicality in order to make it successful. It ended up leaving too many questions in my mind to keep me interested and because of it’s causing me to “think” I would choose a different website. Don’t make me think! And this website did just that, made me think.