Bridge55

Bridge 55 is an online men’s fashion clothes store whose website features an interesting use of texture to convey their style of urban, ruggedness. The most obvious use of texture is the brick wall background of the site. It is a rough, beat up brick wall that uses contrast and a gradation of color to keep it interesting; some parts of the wall are fading to white while others are nearly burnt black. Furthermore, the bricks are not consistently shaped and are cracked at points; as a result, it looks like a very, old thrown-together sort of wall. One nice touch about the wall is exclusively featured on the home page, aesthetically differentiating it self from the rest of the website. The brick wall is shorter in height and opens up in the center to reveal the website’s specials. In a sense, the background becomes a foreground frame to showcase their sales and exclusive items. The frame the wall creates is staggered, not a perfect rectangle, but it keeps with the whole rough and rugged feel of the whole site. Also, the wall features graffiti art of some of the brands the site sells on the wall, which of course, only makes the site feel more urban.
Many of the lines on the website have a torn look to them; the most notable example of torn lines is the navigation bar at the top, center of the page. The background of the navigation bar is a black, torn rectangle that runs up against the background on all sides except for the top, which touches the white banner that extends the length of the page. The white banner and the black navigation bar create a strong contrast with torn edges that immediately place the visitor subconsciously into the world of the site. The banner is clean, white and easy to read. As soon as the viewer’s eyes cross the torn edges of the navigation bar and enter the bricked wall background, they are in an urban world of rugged style where store’s clothes become the spotlight. The only other unique use of line and texture on the site is the side bar on the left side that appears on the left, it is a simple rectangle with a page pealing effect in the upper right corner. It is a nice touch that makes the page feel less plain and two dimensional, but it is the only place they use that effect and consequently, it feels slightly out of place. The website does not use shadows and feels very two dimensional for the most part. It would be nice to see the background move with scrolling to separate it from the rest of the page, and also use shadows and transparency to give it more depth. All dimensionality aside, the texture of the website replicates the feeling of urban, ruggedness of their clothes by using a simple, well picked background and a smart use of torn lines.

~John Marshall