Category: ARTM2210 Intro to Web

ARTM2210: REVIEW 3

David Schurman

The two websites that I selected are Burgatory and Franktuary. Both websites are very similar. I think the balance in the Burgatory website is slightly better than Franktuarys. The Burgatory website has more breathing room. The Franktuary site seems clustered. Both websites do a great job in the unity section. They use consisted font, colors, photos and logos. The Burgatory site does a better job with emphasis. All their logos and fonts seemed to pop right off the page. This makes it easy to navigate throughout the site. Overall, I think Burgatory has a better layout compared to Franktuary. Both sites are similar but Burgatory stands out because of good graphic design and color selection. Also, they use photos that will make you want to enjoy a burger at one of their locations. I think that both websites use the five important things to make sure user see and understand the site. Each site has a clear visual hierarchy. Pages are broken up into clearly defined areas. All the link are clickable and they minimize noise. The Burgatory site is more effective than Franktuarys. Burgatory has more open space and better fonts, graphics, logos, and colors. The Franktuary seems to be plane. Also, half of the website does not show up until

Hannah Daman

 

 

Review 4

 

For this review I will be comparing the restaurant my team and I have created to a restaurant that would be considered to be competition if this company actually did exist. I will be comparing my site with the site of Chipotle. Their site has a navigation bar at the top linked with the menu, nutrition, facts of where the food came from, whats new in the business, catering options, delivery, and a feedback page. There are buttons to the bottoms of the nav bar with sub categories of the main nav bar. Under that they feature a slide show containing pictures of their food with a small description off the the side of them. Under that are images that you can click on to see more information about each food on that slide. Pictures of the ingredients are shown along with drink options, and sides. At the bottom there is an area that has all the links to their social media accounts, and a find near you search bar. Their layout is very bright and playful. It makes you look at it when it switches from slide to slide every 4 seconds. The pictures make you actually want to eat the food and the colors are vey much associated with the restaurant. Very easy to navigate and order online! On the website that my team and I made we have a navbar at the top of the page that scrolls along with the window. The nav bar contains a home, menu, about, and contact button to send you straight to the section of the page you are looking for. The logo along with our company name is centered with a button linked to our menu just below it. Hours are briefly stated at the bottom of this page as well. The menu accounts for starters, main wraps, and desserts, clicking on one of those buttons will lead you to the corresponding tab and its contents plus pricing for those items. The next page down is an About section where we get to tell the customers all about the company and staff. Hours are listed under these bios. We then linked a google map to the selected location to our building in Pittsburgh that is interactive. Under that we listed our contact info for any complaints to be filed plus a way to reserve a seat and place your order online. I think that our layout is basic but effective and is interactive with the viewer.

I will be comparing our restaurant website, The Bastard Child, and Franktuary’s website. Our website is navigation is inspired by Franktuary’s website, so some of the same elements can be found on both websites. Franktuary’s layout involves location, menu, food truck, blog, as well as a slideshow on the homepage. Our website has a “let’s eat”, “find us”, “request us”, “our team” pages. Our branding is different than Franktuary. Franktuary has a simple and clean design concept. It has a responsive design which is something our website lacks. I think that our website branding is unique, but that’s the point of the food truck, to be something that stands out from the competition. The logo and branding colors for The Bastard Child is upbeat and fun. It is bright and attention grabbing, which you want in a food truck. Franktuary also has a great color scheme and logo, however, it has a softer feel to it. The texture is also inspired by Franktuary in the sense it has the repeating light opacity background texture and we tried to emulate that through the repeating truck. Overall, I think that with a few changes to the responsiveness and update some of the functionality of our website, that it could potentially be good competition to Franktuary’s website.

A site that I found that is similar to ours is for a food truck called Revival Chili. This site has a layout that is very easy to navigate, with a bar at the top that includes all options. Once a user clicks the option they want, the page automatically scrolls down to show the page. The texture of this page is very simple.

The text is very balanced and on a straight line, with a plain background.The color scheme for Revival Chili is very simple sticking with black and white for the navigation bar and background. The Principles of Beautiful Web Design says that “ample use of white space, and lack of surrounding color” allow for “photographs to pop off the page” which gives “life and light to the design.” Revival Chili does exactly that because their logo really sticks out. The logo is yellow, red, and green. “Yellow is an active color, red is known to increase human metabolism, and green symbolizes growth, freshness, and hope.” The combination of the three is used nicely in this logo and is very memorable.

This site is very similar to the site we are making for The Bastard Child food truck in terms of layout, which I think is good because it is simple. Our colors and texture are very different. We do not have any “white space.” Our background features the truck from the logo tiled lightly. Our colors are very neutral and mostly warm. The Bastard Child’s site stands out because of its fun mood and interesting visuals.   

Explore each of your choices, then describe and compare the two sites use of Balance, Unity, Emphasis, and Layout. How do they use these principles and implement Krug’s five important “things” to make sure users see and understand the site? Is one site more effective than the other at drawing your attention, and why?

 

For this site review, I chose BRGR and Burgatory. Burgatorys layout and design I think overall is better than BRGR. Burgatorys website has a great layout of balance and unity. Things are evenly placed on the nav bar and as you scroll down theres not too much information. The layout is really key to their site. They also emphasize the different names in their nav bar which is really cool. They absolutely thought outside the box to rename what most restaurants would use in their nav bar. BRGR is a little different. They were a lot less creative in this process. Its a little hard to figure out where the nav bar is until you are on the site for a second and it only scrolls down the site for you. This is interesting but not that great. I created an off center feel to the site and the emphasis felt like it was lacking. It was hard to bring it all together. I honestly think it would have worked better without any nav bar and the name being huge and in the middle of the top page.

 

The five important things I see is the Site I D, the page name (whatever page you are one), the major sections of the site, local navigation, and where I am on the page. I think overall Burgatory is the winner. They create an experience on the site yet you still know exactly where you are and what you are doing the on the site the entire time.

 

 

 

For this assignment, I decided on reviewing Taco Bell’s website in order to compare it to my group’s.

The layout of Taco Bell’s website is relatively stylish, it’s easy to find what you need and find it fast. There are photos and a slideshow, and the colors and scrolling work well. The homepage is available to scroll down to see different elements, while our fusion restaurant website scrolls down to everything that is clickable in the tabs.

The colors are the typical Taco Bell colors of purple and white with some accents of black and grey and light green. Some of the buttons featured are different colors and turn a darker shade of that color when hovered on.

The texture of the Taco Bell website is not as good as it could be in my opinion. There is a lot of white space where nothing occupies those spaces, making the website look a little empty. The texture of the buttons mixed with the colors and photos is a good texture.

The navigation of Taco Bell’s site is relatively alright, it can get a little confusing when you’re scrolling down vs. using the buttons to link you to other parts of the site. If you’re just trying to find the menu or order online, it is very simple.

Our website will stand out because it has all the elements a website needs to be functional and stylish as well. It has color, a good layout, simple navigation, and texture. We have crafted out website in order for the user to be able to find what they need about our food and about our restaurant as a whole.

For this review, I decided to compare the two websites for The Burgatory and No. 9 Park. These two websites are actually quite similar in style and layout when you first land on both homepages. When you proceed to scroll down, No. 9 Park has more to be explored rather than Burgatory who does not, essentially telling its viewers to use the bar at the top to navigate the website.

With balance, Burgatory’s website has less compared with No. 9 Park. In its dropdown bars, only the first two selections have dropdown items, while No. 9 Park sticks with not having any at all.

Unity works well with both websites. They both feel like they were made to flow well and attract customers in order to get an appealing site.

Both websites have an emphasis on photos as soon as you land on the homepage. Burgatory has a slideshow of photos while No. 9 Park has more as you scroll down.

The layout of both websites is very sleek and attractive to consumers. No. 9 Park focuses on a fancier scroll down system which lets the potential customer see photos of the restaurant and read about it as well. As it is an independent eatery it has more space to do this, while Burgatory, which has many locations, cannot do so easily.

They implement Kreug’s important things by making the sites easy to navigate and locate what they want right from the start. After clicking on the menus for both No. 9 Park’s is simple and gives you the ability to be lazy in your scrolling or clicking. Burgatory’s however only allows you to click on one section of the menu at a time before having to go back up to the dropdown menu in order to go to the next selection.

Upon first viewing, Burgatory’s use of photos and informal texts attracts me more, but for navigational sakes, No. 9 Park is a better website overall. No. 9 Park’s use of photos throughout the website and ease of use makes it superior in the comparison between the two.

Hannah Daman

 

Professor Ames

 

I chose to compare burgatory and madmex’ websites. Madmex’ site uses a series of muted colors associated with the restaurant’s color scheme. There is a banner at the top with a photo of the inside of the restaurant with their logo laying underneath it connect to a menu bar. As you scroll down the menu bar attaches to the top of the screen and the logo shrinks a bit. The balance of the site seems to be leaning to the left because the block of text with their news information in it is smashed together.  The photos to the right of the copy are a little boring sliding between 3 photos left to right. At the bottom of the page rests another menu bar with comments, about, privacy and search listed for easy navigation. Based on the color scheme the page seems unified but the typeface chosen for the text makes the eye uncomfortable to read. The layout is somewhat basic and sort of unappealing. As for burgatory’s website theirs is vibrant, modern and done tastefully. At the top of the screen is a nav bar showing the menu, their locations, news, merch, some kind of member sign up, contact, and their social media accounts with the burgatory logo in the center. Under that is a slideshow of various images of customers and staff members enjoying themselves at the restaurant. The titles for the different sections are 3 to 4 times bigger than the text underneath of them showing great visual hierarchy and style. Under this there are 3 panels one to sign up for the mailing list, a thank you message to the customers and a link to “join the crew.” Burgatorys layout, visual hierarchy, and balance is all accounted for while madmex’ site is jumbled up and messy.

I will be reviewing the two sites, No. 9 Park and Six Penn Kitchen. Both of the sites are really well designed, but if I were to pick my favorite I would have to say the No. 9 Park was the best. They both have great Balance but No. 9 Park’s site is a little bit more balance oriented. For example, they they have a constant header that is easy to navigate and the Six Penn Kitchen’s header is a little bit less clear. Krug mentions a few important “things” in design. I would say his most important idea is to you make sure users can see and understand your site. This is extremely important because if a basic user can not understand what you are trying to show them, then there is really no point in even having it. Lastly, I think the No. 9 Park website just grabs your attention a little more over Six Penn Kitchen because they have a newer “modern” feel. Overall their design is just more clean and crisp.

For this review we were to take a look at single page websites. A personal favorite of mine that I found on Reddit is one called “Every Noise at Once” which is found at everynoise.com

I enjoy music, and I believe that anyone else who enjoys music would definitely want to visit this site sometime. What it is, is a collection of songs from all known genres and plays you a sample of which ever genre you want to find out more about. When you choose a genre, it will show a large collection of artists that have songs for you to listen to. I actually have been able to find new and interesting music simply just by going through the options at random. I find myself going back to it whenever I’m bored or want to see how obscure music can get. I always end up finding something cool and I never leave disappointed.

The website is plain and minimalistic, with the words forming a scatter plot that fills the page. You can scroll up and down to find about 1607 different forms of music. In my personal opinion, I believe that this website is well made and straight to the point. Everything fits and doesn’t detract from the overall experience.

If you have a spare moment and you want to find out more about Catholic psychedelic synth folk rock, you’ll be sure to find something that gets your attention!

I chose the site, favoritealbums2017.yaybrigade.com, for my second review. This one page is what it says it is, Yay Bridgade’s top albums of 2017. This one page is extremely interactive and combines movement of the user with audio of a song from the album displayed. The site’s color is simply amazing. They essentially use the album cover as inspiration for the design. This lets the sound of the album translate into the design of the page. With every album that plays a different color scheme and design are displayed. It is almost as if you get a feel for the album through that design. I greatly appreciate the time and effort spent to make the users experience more aesthetically pleasing. Texture also plays a key role in the design of this site. It has a clean look with the circles and the movement of the individual records. This utilizes shape as one of its key design elements. The circles not only represent a clean interesting design, but actually basing it off of this idea of vinyls spinning is a really creative way to tie the piece together. This site also plays with repetition in the sense that it uses the album covers as a “nesting doll” like appearance, aka one inside of each other. This plays with the feeling of depth through layers. The usability of the site I would say is well thought out and contains some experimentation.  All that you have to do is hover your mouse over the spinning records to listen to a sample song, know the name of the album, as well as the name of the song. As the sample song goes on, a rising color overwhelms half of the site, letting the user know how long the song will play until its over. Its little elements like this that help the usability as a whole. There is also a stacked way of using it where you can clearing find and preview the album and song. I think it is nice to have the two versions so as to please users. Especially viewers that want a more simplistic view of the albums. Overall, I would argue that site’s design is good in the sense it is well thought out and creatively experimental. I think that the design attracts users who want a little “spice” in their web design. I think that they have mastered a balance between making their site look complex without sacrificing usability and simplicity.

For my review I decided on the website for Tignes, which is a ski resort in the French Alps. The website is designed well, the colors flow together. Cool colors of blue and white are used throughout with accents of black. The texture of the website is also very good, with small circles, stripes, and triangles framing different parts of the website and used as the background in other parts.

The website is a one scroll option, all the viewer has to do is scroll up and down in order for the content to appear. There are only a few links and they are used sparingly only for links to photo galleries and social media. Throughout the entire time scrolling down there is a toolbar at the top that allows you to choose one of their other websites, share the page, and change the language the website is translated in.

The site is easy to navigate and read due to the feature that makes everything appear as you scroll. Nothing distracts you from the content you are reading. Each element comes in when it is appropriate and does so in a cool manner by flying in from different directions. All of the text is wrapped around a photo or graphic, making it interesting to read.

This website’s design is well done due to the freshness and originality of the design. It is not a commonly made website and makes use of the best features you can use in making a website. From all point of views the website’s elements are well put together and thought out for the advertisement of a ski resort. It dives into the resort, the people at the resort, and what you experience at it.