Author: Danielle McGuire

The biggest competition I see for our burger fusion restaurant is BRGR(brgrpgh.com), a burger restaurant located in 4 different areas in Pittsburgh. Their website is a combination of the colors orange and blue, which is a heavy contrast and makes the website pop in the viewer’s eyes. While the colors do make the website pop, i’m not sure if it’s the most pleasant-to-the-eye combination when on the site for an extended period of time.
BRGR uses a side navigation bar, which with certain buttons (specifically the EAT and DRINK buttons) will show text saying they are “handcrafted”. While the emphasis to their crafty food items is a plus, the pop-up text covers up part of the burger picture they display on their front page, which looks sloppy and at times hard to see. Besides the pop-up text, the overall navigation is clean and effectively stands out, as the buttons are blue circles against an orange background.
I enjoy the use of texture on BRGR’s website, it is mainly in an orange background image, which uses a speckled look, which makes the feel of the page more rustic.
Compared to our burger fusion restaurant page, we may stand out more because of our simple and serious layout that focuses on our end product (fusion burgers) and we also do away with any un-needed background music (unlike BRGR’s homepage page). It also goes without saying that our product with stand-out because we produce unique burgers with cultural combinations that do not exist in many places in Pittsburgh (and not at BRGR).
Our layout is straightforward with little guesses to where things are. We have a top navigation bar with drop-down menus for more detailed information and links, all without taking away from our images and product. Our website uses a more at-home color scheme that Pittsburgh knows (White, Dark Gray, soft Yellow) but also makes certain things pop-out to our customers that call for added attention, all this without added strain if on the page for a while.
The Burgh also has the chance to become part of a bigger community. The Burgh has a E-Club that supplies discounts as well as email exclusives to those that sign up. BRGR does not have this aspect on their website.

For my third website review, I chose to compare the sites Burgatory.com and Mad Mex.com. Both sites, upon visiting the homepages, are stylized with images and graphics as well as multiple textures. Both restaurants are dedicated to a more casual dining experience and at first glance their websites show that by not being too minimalistic or use too many “fancy” fonts that some more high-end restaurants use.
Burgatory makes it clear that they are a specialized burger place by having a large hamburger graphic at the forefront of their page. Burgatory differs from MadMex a lot in their use of navigation. In Burgatory’s case, their navigation is off to the right side of the page, and contains a drop down to certain categories, contrary to MadMex’s site, where they have a traditional horizontal navigation bar near the top of the page, but do not have any drop down menus.
I feel like Burgatory also has MadMex beat in balance qualities on their site, Burgatory has information stacked almost equally on their website, while MadMex has information leveled on one side of the site more than the other. One case of this imbalance is in the navigation bar at the top of MadMex’s site, where the left side is larger font than the right side of links. While this does use a little bit of emphasis to show that those are the most useful and used links, it looks a little odd.
Burgatory shows its emphasis on certain menu items by the “slideshow” of items (separated by burgers and shakes) on it’s front page. The large text it shows on top of the floating image, the emphasis is on their product and the name of a specific product, as well as the menu which is referenced when hovering over the image in different spots.
In the case of making links on their sites easy to find, both sites do a good job. MadMex has their links highlight with an underline to indicate it can be clicked, Burgatory has their links highlight in a different color when hovered on.
Both sites has a little problem with noise. MadMex’s site has an automatic slideshow showing different promotions and events at the restaurant, as well as a weird stack of links on the front page that is not organized into the top or bottom navigation bars of the site, and is visible before the introduction of the establishment. These things take away from the experience of the website and can disrupt the process of getting the wanted information from the site. If these links were put into the categories in the navigation bar at the top of the website, I think it would make the website a little easier to go through, as well as navigate to desired pages. As for the slideshow, making it click-through instead of automatic would be a little less distracting. Burgatory’s noise issue is just in top of their homepage, where their single burger/milkshake highlight slideshow is. In this part, the slideshow is bordered by both the logo and the navigation bar on both sides of it, as well as a gift card graphic/link right below the navigation bar on the right. With the buttons to go left or right in the sideshow so close to other links, I found that sometimes when looking at a menu item in the slideshow and going to the next one, I would be at the giftcard page because I accidentally clicked it instead of the “next” arrow.
Overall, I prefer to navigate through Burgatory’s website over MadMex’s website, Burgatory offers the eye a lot in terms of their design and graphics, as well as the organization of their information, which is easy to seek out and read. MadMex for the most part is clean, but with faults in terms of their organization of text, and their odd choice of link emphasis and the displacement of links.

For my second website review, I chose a site by FRAMES, which is a site that houses many different stories. The one I found as my example and subject of review is an excellent single page site for the story “July’s June”

This site makes use of all of it’s space on the page and is navigated by scrolling down right through the story. Something that really caught my eye was the use of textures throughout the site. Many of the background images mend together seamlessly and at times are two images fused together (ex. The first background image behind the title page, where the darkness of the lake water developes into a man’s face at the bottom. This frames the story in a way, because towards the end of the story, there is a woman’s face the mends into a picture of a tree.). Also, all of the images have a depth to them, leading the eye farther into the page (as good example of this is the image of the cabin, ghosts of trees left behind it).

Another use of texture that I found particularly interesting was the handwritten letters throughout the story. These parts stray away from the regular embedded text of the story and in a way give a little bit of nostalgia. Towards the bottom of the page, there is an added wooden frame and leaves flowing into the next section of the story.

This site uses a lot of warm colors (like orange and light purple) as well as cold colors (green and blue) which take cues from the story itself.

When you’re finished with the story, there is a slight pause in the site where the last of the graphics are, and then below there is a small set of credits to those who made the site, and where to contact them. They also made it very easy to navigate back to the top of the page to read again, or to go back to their archives to read something else.

Overall, I think this is an excellent way to make a single page site. Using all of the space that is given is a good way to immerse someone in a story, and having graphics that flow into each other keep the reader focused on the story and make it a pleasant experience for those that visit. The ease of navigating to and from the site make it a prime example in single page design.

I decided to do my first website review on the site ThinkGeek.com because I have been on their site many times because of their unqiue products based on movies and tv shows, their site from what I remember has always been very easy and fun to browse.

On their homepage I noticed that they have 3 lines of option bars to choose from. One helpfully shows categories of products and interests to choose from. Underneath these two drop down menus, is a full line of specific categories that would be helpful for people looking for new stock, buying a present, or celebrating a holiday. Lastly, the bar underneath that is a line of logos from various brands; Doctor Who, Star Wars, DC Comics and more. I found this part particularly helpful and eye appealing, it is one of the first things the eye comes to on the site and are the brands that people shop for the most.

For my item I chose to go into the Doctor Who section. I really liked their way of listing items, and the size of the thumbnails were perfect for getting an idea of what the product was, while not too big and not straining the eyes. One change I would make would be to shift the listing of the items further to the left and centering it to make it more comfortable to browse.

I found a comic book featuring the 9th doctor that I wanted and clicked on the link and had no trouble of finding the “Buy Now” button, because it was a different color and size than the rest of the text on the page. I liked this a lot about ThinkGeek and I think it makes the buying process easier. However, when I got to the cart page and clicked ‘continue shopping’ it sent me to a general book search page and not the original Doctor Who page I was on. I would have liked it to take me back to the original page I was coming from incase I wanted to purchase more things from the same brand.

Overall, I think the ThinkGeek site is good aesthetically and avoids making assumptions on gender in their design. The site has a good balance of color between black, grey, and green, and uses other colors to bring attention to other details that are important. The site also functions very well in design for people that are not familiar with their products, as it as helpful links and pictures to guide the shopping process forward.