Week 3A: Website Critique

For this blog post we will be looking at a couple websites and discussing their aesthetics, design, and branding. Specifically, we will determine what can be improved and how beneficial features of the sites impact our reactions.


Critique:

The first issue with this site is that there is nothing introducing me to what exactly the Riverside Art Center is, what it does, who it serves, where it is located, etc. Some things I can infer, such as there's perhaps art there to be viewed. However, I don't really know if it is a gallery, a strictly event space, open to the public...Any relevant information I would want to know if, for nothing else, I even was interested in visiting. The reason I may not be so quite to explore it involved the next issue.

The color scheme of the site also has some issues that could be tamed. By clicking through some of the links, each page has a different and often busy motley of color. On the one hand, the site does well with keeping the text high in contrast which does a lot for readability but also makes it irritating to look art for too long. The big problem with this as a branding issue has to do with the expectation that as an "art center" it speak better toward the organizers artistic expertise if the website had a more appealing, and especially consistent color scheme.

Lastly, the most egregious issue is that there are no pictures, especially on the front page. Circling back to the first problem, it misses the opportunity to represent the art center with any visuals that would make it appealing to visit or know anything about.

Firstly, this site is pleasantly more explicit about what this business offers which appears to be a supplier specializing in parts for a particular car model. Having said that, there are some issues. The culprit of design folly has to do with the text formatted over the pictures which occurs a lot in this site. I understand the intention to add intrigue to the different links and directories but it actually works to decrease the readability of the words as there is not enough contrast despite occasionally laying over filtering upon images behind the word. 

Another issue is that some of the pictures have resolutions that are way too low for web use. Interestingly, the resolution doesn't need to be that high for web in order to avoid the choppy look of some of the photos. More care should be taken to get higher quality images, especially when providing a service that relies heavily on viewing the finished product.

On top of these things, there may actually be too many pictures, to a point where it seems cluttered. The layout may also contribute this. The site may do better by cutting down on some of the pictures around the site where they aren't necessary and then maybe including a gallery where all of the pictures can reside.

Praise:

Apple

The Apple site, as can be expected from such a big company, has a very appealing website. The really big thing that makes it really appealing is how simple, yet elegant the design is. The organization has a lot to do with this. A virtue of being such a big company has the benefit of letting the brand images and logo do the work it, such as the case with the Apply logo being the home page button. The organization also relies heavily upon and is designed around the visuals which are flashy but not so much as to seem cluttered, but gives just the right amount of information. 

Headhunter Hairstyling

This was another site that I really like. The color scheme was simple, consistent, light, and seemed to compliment the theme of the site overall. There were pictures and visuals but they weren't all over the place, and were clearly curated with attention to detail and quality. I was also able to glean a lot about the business right away, it being a unisex hair shop. There wasn't an over-abundance of menu items or disparate amount of links and everything was easy to find. This wasn't a site from a company as big as Apple but the design of the site was quite comparable.