For review 3 I chose to investigate the websites for Bravo Franco Ristorante and Six Penn Kitchen. To begin with, I found that the two websites had many similarities. For example, both sites have their company name and logo at the top center of their home pages; making it very easy for the viewer to observe what restaurant they are looking at. They both also have a tool bar at the top of their home site with links to different parts of the site, such as: menus, contact information, specials, etc. A third similarity I came across while experimenting was that when I clicked on a link in the tool bar, I was directed to a different page but still had the same tool bar to use if I wanted to go to a different page. I think that these aspects gave strength to both sites because I didn’t have to do any thinking when I wanted to travel to another page.
That said, the two restaurants are very different when it comes to what they serve, so their layouts are also very different. Bravo Franco Ristorante’s site had a much more distinguished look. It used serif typefaces and a more natural, business-like color scheme. The color scheme and typefaces remained constant from page to page, which gave it unity. The information presented on each page was clean and readable. Each page also had a heading, with a word that was much larger than the body of that page, which emphasized what the viewer should expect to read. The layout was clean and the text was very easy to read on each page, however I found it be quite boring. I found myself bored with the lack of color usage and illustrations. There were a few pictures present of dishes they served, but they were very small and in my eyes, took a back seat to the rest of the content on the page.
The design of Six Penn Kitchen was very different from the previous restaurant. This website used a much more playful color scheme and modern look. As stated before, the information that I was searching for was very easy to find due to the tool bar being constant within each page. However, I found that for the most part, the text was centered on each page making it not as legible. The site did use emphasis in making words bold or a different color, but I still found myself getting lost in the text at times. The website dealt with unity well since each page was almost identical to the next. Balance was also achieved because the body on each page was centered, leaving equal negative space on each side.
In all, I think both websites were successful in achieving balance, unity, emphasis, and layout. I think Bravo Franco’s was more successful when it came to emphasis and layout while Six Penn was more successful with balance and unity. Both sites were “idiot-proof,” which is a major goal for web designers according to “Don’t Make Me Think.” Also, I didn’t find many useless words that would turn me off to the site. Krug states multiples times in the text that the less words, the better. Viewers have a goal in mind and if they can’t find it within seconds, they will go to the next website. Neither website made me feel like I had to rip out my hair trying to find what I was looking for, so I’m sure Krug would say, well done.