ARTM2210 Intro to Web Design
Just another Intro to… siteArchive for Monthly Review
Monthly review 4
While creating our shoe site, our concept of a socially conscious company that gives back to the community made us immediately think of Toms shoes. Toms.com uses the color blue as an accent throughout the website, with a clean white background. This helps the pictures to come to the forefront. Their pictures, especially their image scroller on their homepage, help show the story of giving that Toms is trying to convey. On their products pages, all of the images of their products are on a white background, which help the products pop from the page, drawing your eye to them and minimizing distractions while browsing.
Toms is all about giving back and social consciousness, and they highlight this focus by placing their “One to One” giving program on the main menu bar, as well as a link for stories and videos of people they have helped. They could have placed this information lower on the page, or in a submenu, but by placing it right alongside the shoes they are selling, they let a visitor coming to their site know that this is a primary focus of the company. They also highlight other socially conscious companies and products through a marketplace tab on the main menu that is a tannish color, which helps it stand out on the menu bar.
Overall the website is very easy to navigate. Links are easily recognizable and intuitive. The top menu stays in place throughout the site with their logo branding the page to remind you you are still in their website. Each subpage has either a picture or text that tells you were in the site you are. At the bottom in the footer are all the main link for their pages, with their social media icons colored a blue to tie them into the site nicely.
We attempted to take some of Toms website designs and incorporate them into our shoe site. We placed a link in the navigation to highlight that we were focused on giving as well as selling shoes. Keeping our logo prominent throughout the site was also important, though we should have enlarged it some. We also tried to have a simple, elegant design to highlight our products, photos, and our mission. To improve our site, placing all of our products on a simplified background, or a background color to match our site would help the shoes not get lost in the page amongst other shoes and products. Overall I think the spirit of our site matches Toms, but needs improvements before it could be taken seriously.
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Final Monthly Review
For this Final Review I chose our group project site, deja-shoe, that I was very please with how clean, functional and open that the site got much of a positive feel from the class.
Balance, Unity, Emphasis, and Layout, Color, Texture and Navigation:
The balance was centered and even across the page. With the logo in the center giving the actual page an anchor that the sides of the page feel symmetrical and even. That does enhance the emphasis of sleek, simple and professional which was key to the unity of the site’s identity. Layout was based much on other shopping sites and giving us a good direction for design since you don’t have to reinvent the wheel but just adapt it to your ideas and style. Color seemed to be the biggest gripe from most and we at first had a hard time agreeing on a color that appealed to everyone but the Blue that was chosen wasn’t vintage and very facebook in shade. Our site looks very smooth and the color does pop because it is more vibrant than the other colors associated with ‘vintage’ (browns, oranges, rustic accents, pastels,…etc) and we could alter that to give the site a better sense of style. The Navigation was something that I really liked because everything was click and go, while not having to hunt for links or button to find to get what you want.
Improvements would be expanding the content, upgrading content, changing the colors to give it a more ‘Vintage’ feeling while keeping the positives of the navigation and maybe give some texture in places will give the site a more aged look. It come to my mind the look of a 1970’s VW Van, faded orange paint with rust accumulations along the body of the frame of the vehicle, a very dingy sun beaten off white for the roof, and dirt/dust on the tires as so you have a brownish/black. These colors could be incorporated along with a pastel blue as that they would contrast and be more appealing while giving the site it’s own personality and identity away from Facebook.
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Monthly Review #2
For my second monthly review, I chose to evaluate the single page Gutshof Klostern website. It can be found either by going on http://onepagelove.com/ or by using the actual URL address, http://www.gutshof-klostern.de. This site was written in German; therefore, I had to translate it to be able to read the content. For this analysis, I will be focusing on how well the website incorporates color and texture, and the overall usability of the site.
At first glance, I found this site to be creative and colorful. I was drawn in by the design and the aesthetic quality. The color palette consists of several shades and tints of brown, maroon, green, pink and blue. The maroon color was used mainly for the headings. As written in the second chapter of The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, “The darker shades of red, such as burgundy and maroon, have a rich, indulgent feel about them.” Due to this statement, I feel that this color choice was a good idea because it might help the viewers feel more indulgent about buying sweets. As for green, the chapter mentioned that it is associated with the environment and symbolizes growth and freshness. This color works well because it helps give off the idea that their products are fresh and organic. It was used to represent leaves throughout the page. Pink was used in moderation for petals and some text. For me, this color symbolizes romance and sweetness. I am assuming holidays are some of their busiest times; therefore, this color was a good choice as well. The one color I was not thrilled about was blue. Returning to the chapter mentioned earlier, it says that blue has a way of decreasing appetite because it is not a common color found in food. When scanning through their page, I found the blue font and butterfly to be out of place with the rest of the elements. Finally, the color brown was used the most in the website. Like most neutral tones, it does a good job of unifying all the colors together. Besides doing a decent job at choosing the right colors, this website also utilizes several good textures.
Texture was one of the first things I noticed about this site. The main textures used for the background were wood paneling and burlap. There were also a variety of other smaller ones added to the plants and food products. The wood paneling was used in several areas to create a rustic, natural feel to the page. By angling this texture, the designer was able to create depth of field. I like this effect because it is common for websites to appear flat and boring. For the rest of the page the background is beige burlap. In a way, this texture works because it does not overpower the content. However, I am little confused on how fits into the theme. As for the plants, my only issue is that some of the petals, leaves, and coffee beans have a blurry look to them. I figured this was done on purpose to continue the idea of depth of field. Personally, I feel that was not the best way to go about it because the blurry look appears fake and it detracts from the design. Overall, the designer attempted to use textures well, but there are a few changes that could be made to improve the design.
As for the usability of the site, my response is about the same. The designer did a good job on creating suitable navigation, but there were a few issues with readability. For navigation, viewers have the option to either scroll downwards or press the tabs at the top to jump to each section. Both ways worked smoothly. The designer used many different fonts throughout the page. I found the one particular calligraphy font to be difficult to read, and it clashed with the font used for the tabs. In addition, I feel the brown button used to show the contact information would be better placed somewhere other than the bottom middle of the page. It covers up the content as the viewer scrolls down. These problems are minor and can easily be fixed.
The designer of the Gutshof Klostern website did good job at capturing the attention of the viewers. For the most part, the color palette and textures worked harmoniously together. The overall usability of the site was good as well. It was mentioned on the website that it was still under construction. Therefore, I am sure some of the problems I have mentioned have already been noted before.
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