For my two sites to compare I chose Burgatory and Smokey Bones, both of which are restaurants in the Pittsburgh area. Surprisingly enough to me, these two sites are very different from each other in the way that they are setup. Both of them have rotating images as soon as you get to the page but after that the Burgatory site is much different from Smokey Bones. Burgatory has a top, centered navigation bar at the top then as you scroll more information appears. Where as Smokey Bones site is just that initial page with rotating images and the navigation bar is on the left side going down. Both of these sites are strong in the sense of Unity in the fact that you take in the website as a whole at first then you start to take in the minor details of the website. In my opinion both of these sites also have a strong use of Emphasis. Both have a large gallery with rotating images as soon as you get to the site, this emphasizes the fact that you are on a restaurant website and what you are looking at is food. As far as Balance goes I think Burgatory’s site is done a little bit better just because of the fact that there is more information after the images at the top, the website is not just taken over with images like the Smokey Bones website is. Then looking at Layout, I also feel like Burgatory does a better job of executing its website. Everything just seems to flow a little bit better and the site just feels like it does when you are in the restaurant itself which is an interesting thing. The overall setup with the gallery at the top and the rest of the information once you scroll makes it not so overwhelming when you are trying to navigate the site. All in all; looking at both sites; I would give the win to Burgatory for a better overall site.
Websites:
http://www.burgatorybar.com/ http://smokeybones.com/