Simkovic Review Four

The website for the La Cocinita Food Truck (https://lacocinitafoodtruck.com) would be considered competition for our fusion restaurant; as we are both food trucks looking to sell our food to people on the street. The first thing I noticed while visiting this site is that the website has a red background; and according to “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design” red is known to “increase human metabolism,” meaning that it’s smart to have a food related site on a red background, as it will make the viewers of your page hungrier. On a similar note, the company’s truck is also red, having the same effect as the site background, making customers want food. The main accent color is a shade of mustard yellow, with the text on the red background standing out well. Yellow is “associated with happiness” to quote “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design,” making yellow a friendly option when used to offset the red. They also use this deep tone of yellow for the background color of their main navigation bar. The reason this color is an accent color as opposed to the main color, is that “too much yellow can be overpowering.” The La Cocinita website uses color well, and is not tough on the viewer’s eyes because of it. Something that stood out to me was the fact that the top NavBar had some items present drop down menus on a hover, but not all of them. I liked the look of having different styles on one NavBar, it makes the site look more diverse or have more depth in my opinion. The layout of the site is okay, I feel that the sharp corners of everything on the page looks kind of harsh, but I did like things such as the auto scrolling gallery on the homepage, and the idea of pictures showing the progression of the truck. The site has no apparent texture, as everything on the site is just a plain, solid color. The only elements that could have texture on the site are the pictures, but only two of the pictures actually load when you click “Food Pics” under the Photo tab. The site feels quite “blocky” due to the sharp corners on the images and the straight bars surrounding the headers on the other pages. One thing that I really liked, and I’m now planning on incorporating into my group’s final project, is that on the La Cocinita home page they have pictures of the logos for Twitter, FaceBook, and Instagram. Should you click on one of these pictures, it will take you to the company’s page on that particular social media source. The menu is laid out differently, as with our site we will be listing specific dishes to incorporate the fusion aspect of the restaurant, but La Cocinita has a menu set up like a Chipotle or Moe’s, which consists of pick a vessel, pick a protein, pick sauces, toppings, etc. This site is an okay webpage (5.5 or 6/10) as far as getting the job done, but our group plans on making our web page more refined than the La Cocinita, through CSS styling and slicing. The World Showcase site will have some similar elements, such as a NavBar up top, a logo above it, and obviously many similar page ideas. However our stylization of the website would be much cleaner, with a more luxurious and homely feel than the La Cocinita, establishing the World Showcase as an elite food truck.