ARTM2210 Intro to Web Design
Just another Intro to… siteArchive for Spring 2013 A; 4th Monthly Review
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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4th Monthly Review: Déjà Shoe
Upon reentering my group’s website for Déjà Shoe, I found that I am still proud of what we had accomplished. The amount of time and effort put into the project shows greatly in each page. Though there is always room for improvement, we were able to meet the main requirements for a successful website. To prove this statement, I will compare it with the information I read in the book called “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design.” These chapters put great empathizes in the importance of navigation, hierarchy, and unity.
Navigating through our website is fairly easy for viewers to achieve. We stuck to the traditional layout, with the use of a header, footer and side navigation bar, so that new users will still be familiar with our site. In addition, we added breadcrumbs on several of the more in-depth pages to prevent them from getting lost. I also feel that the majority of our buttons are obvious that they are clickable because I used a hover tag for them. Besides the easy navigation, the use of hierarchy improves our site as well.
In the first chapter of the book mentioned above, it discussed the importance of the use of emphasis. It suggested that one should create a focal point for the items they want to stand out. To accomplish this, we stressed the importance of our headings and logo by placing them in the top center of our page. We figured that area was the best place to grab the viewers’ attention. Other methods we used to create hierarchy were color contrast and isolation of elements. We were able to incorporate these techniques in every page, which helped with unifying our site together.
When clicking through the Déjà Shoe website, all of our pages have a clean, professional look, without many distractions. The elements on our site are arranged well so there is an asymmetrical balance. The book recognizes the need for viewers to recognize that each page belongs to the website. I feel we have succeeded in doing so because we kept the same look throughout our site. The layout, navigation, hierarchy, and balance all flow well together. The main issue our group realized was that we made a poor decision in our use of color and lack of texture.
We discovered during critique that the blue we chose to use is very similar to the one used for Facebook. Many of our classmates expressed that this issue was distracting and caused them to think of Facebook rather than Déjà Shoe. For future projects, I will make sure I do not repeat this mistake. In addition, we did not really use texture in our website. If we incorporated this approach, our site could be more interesting. However, we would need to find the right balance, as to not take away from the sight as a whole. Overall, I feel our site was creative and nicely organized.
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