No9Park is a French restaurant in Boston. This is not your typical walk-in restaurant but a night out on the town. You come here to wine and dine. Their website represents the style of restaurant. They use a combination of serif and san serif font with a horizontal layout. As you scroll, all the text is center on the page giving it a clean, simple look. There is a combination of pictures and colored backgrounds. The pictures have a dark tint to them for the purpose of not mixing values when adding text on top. The site is balanced by its use of color, text and backgrounds. Emphasis and unity are represented in the consistency of the menus. You can choose what menu you would like to look at (bar, dessert, enter, etc.). Once you click on one, the title of the menu is at the top-center of the page in serif font. As you scroll down, the subtitles and items on the menu are a smaller, san serif font. The name and price of the item is bolded with the ingredients written below it, unbolded. All of these details show unity because they look the same and are shown in the same place on the page. Along with emphasis, the different fonts explain the categories represented and leads you down the page. Balance, unity and emphasis play into the big picture of style and layout. Their style was represented by using all of these elements.
Bakn is a restaurant in Warrendale, PA. This is the opposite of your wine and dine but a casual stop-in. This place is everything bacon. If you are a vegetarian, this place might not be for you. Their website is consistent in color: grey, white, reddish-brown. They balance their colors by using different values; if it is a dark background, the use of white text is used and vice versa. A piece of bacon is part of their logo aside from the typeface. They incorporate the bacon shape as a frame for pictures and text as your scroll. This show the unity of their logo and stylistic choice of the website. Emphasis is displayed in their consistent use of headings and placement. A user would not be confused what they are reading because sections are labeled. Lastly, the layout has a combination of organic shapes with a grid system. This makes the website easy to read while still making it look aesthetically pleasing.
Both websites do a good job of using Krug’s five important “things” which are to create a clear visual hierarchy on each page, take advantage of conventions, break pages up into clearly defined areas, make it obvious what’s clickable, and minimize noise. Text is broken up into different sizes to give hierarchy and it is broken up into defined areas on the page with white space. In both menus, the convention system is: name, ingredients and cost of item. Both websites follow the system which is helpful for the user to consume information. Buttons on both sites show they are clickable by an element of change that happens when you hover over the button. For example, on No9Park when you hover over the buttons in the top panel, it changes to a darker value. Lastly, noise is minimized on both sizes with the use of defined space; gives it breathing room.
If I had to choose between these two sites whether one is more effective at getting their message across, I would have to go with No9Park. This is due to the quality of their graphics and the scroll speed. On the Bakn website, the scroll time is delayed which can make it annoying to the user and the graphics are pixelated which shows poor quality. Other than those factors, I enjoy the Bakn website because of their theme and integrating that into their website.