For my website review I decided to look at the websites of two restaurants, Kiyoshi and Meat & Potatoes. My group is actually using Meat & Potatoes as a guideline for our own website endeavors, but that’s not to say that Kiyoshi’s website is lacking in anyway, but it is a bit. Both websites are simple in their own way, but each is able to deliver their information in a clean and fluid motion thanks to their layout, color, texture and navigation.
Let’s take a look at Meat & Potatoes first. When you first go to the website you are sent to a home screen with a black background with the faintest hint of design in the middle of the page with a butcher’s diagram of a steer. However instead of the diagram dividing the steer into its parts of meat they decided to label it with the navigation bar options. Each is clickable and directs you to the appropriate page. Much like the home page each page of their website has a black background with the faint hint of a design and they place the information within customized elegant brackets. In short Meat & Potatoes website is plain, basic, but elegant and informative.
Then there is Kiyoshi, Like I said before their website is in no way inferior to Meat & Potatoes in terms of information distribution, but what they lack is creativity and use of their page layout. When you first open Kiyoshi’s website you are exposed to a very plain and utilitarian navigation bar in the top corner with the graphic design of their name below and on the left. Below that there is a scrolling of 5 images in a box. All over the home page there is pictures of food but when you get to the actual menu there isn’t a single picture and the pictures of the menu are out of focus and slightly blurry. This caused my eyes to hurt a bit while looking at the screen.
Like I said multiple times now, Kiyoshi is not a bad site, if you like a utilitarian website that get’s you were you want to go. However, as I am a TV & Video Production major, hoping to entertain people with whatever I create, I believe that no matter what you make it should be visually and audibly appealing to your audience and if you happen to not have one of them then the other should compensate for the lack of the other. So when it comes down to the two Meat & Potatoes is the better website in my book for its simple yet elegant design, and is why my group and I look to it for inspiration for our own website.