Web Design

While trying to find some poorly designed websites I came across Aurga Music. This site was pretty much repulsive. The first thing I noticed was the background. It was animated, busy, and distracting. Another horrible aspect was the lack of usability. In the, “9 Essential Principles for Good Web Design” is usability. A website should be a tool for a person to use. This website is confusing. I couldn’t tell what the purpose of the website actually was.  The website also picked horrible coloring. It has green writing on a blue background. It has a low contrast rate when one of the most important aspects in web design is contrast. The navigation aspect was also horrible. When I was looking at the website I didn’t know where to go next. There were a whole bunch of links but I couldn’t figure out what the site was actually about. Also some of the links didn’t work, which is frustrating. When I am browsing a page the links better work! If the links don’t work I usually just “x” out of the site.  The links that did work didn’t have any similarities. They should have the same template, so a person knows they are related. The links were all different colors also. Links should all be the same color.  There were also a lot of animated clip art that was not necessary and just looked like clutter.

One website I think has really good design is Mozilla. They have a very simple layout that is centered orientated.  I think that when a site uses center orientation it shows simplicity and balance. The background is a soft neutral color. I think that when a website uses a plain non-complex background it shows that they care more about designing the content of the page rather than the background. A good principle with Web Design is using bold colors sparingly. When you do this it grabs the attention of the viewer. Here Mozilla uses bold coloring for their logo of the fox and the world. There is plenty of white space. According to the article, “9 Essential Principles for Good Web Design,” white space is used to give balance, proportion and contrast to a page. I think that when a user goes to a site with a lot of white space they don’t feel overwhelmed with all the information that is being thrown at them. If there is little white space the page make look unfriendly and too complex and cluttered.  There font size is a bigger size so that everyone can read it.

 Another website that is designed well is Nine West.  Nine West is very good at navigating the eye. In the upper left hand corner they have their logo Nine West. This is the first place the viewer will look. It’s important to have the logo up there because it allows the viewer to know immediately what they are looking at. They then have your eyes follow to an image. This image is very large and takes up the entire home page. It shows you their new Faux items. Their navigation buttons are also easy to find. They are right on top. The text is also clear to where it is taking you. Another important aspect is it has a search bar so I user can find exactly what they want immediately.  They also have two small access buttons to Facebook and Twitter on their homepage so someone could easily follow them. Another good aspect they used is that each of their website pages has the same background template. This interlinks all their pages together. They also have plenty of white space, which makes the page seem balanced.  The page is easy to use.