Website Review: LiveJournal (Part 5 of 5)

I really like the clean, simple look of LiveJournal. The classic top bar, side bar, content area layout is perfect for blog reading and writing. All space is well used but not cluttered.

www.livejournal.com/

Design Verdict: Good

Website Review: Whole Foods (Part 4 of 5)

I love whole foods and this is a stunning webpage, however I think the first impression of the website at the landing page is not a good one. Looking at the main grid on the front page each box could be an article, a recipe, find a store, health tips, cooking tips, and just about anything else. The pictures do not really match the box content. Another problem is that although each grid box have good design individually however, the font, font placement, font size and colors are different between each making iterating through the list of content laborious. Secondly the second, green navigation bar is not intuitive. The two sets of buttons on the left change what content is shown, but the results sometimes barely fit in the category. The third button is not a selection like the others but actually navigates you to another page. Overall it looks great but wouldn't use or read the front page much.

www.wholefoodsmarket.com/

Website Review: Éléphant (Part 3 of 5)

This restaurants website shows us how beautiful photography can help give a page a professional and simple look. Scrolling down the page you realize that the background moves at a different rate than the second layer of content, which gives a sense of depth. The single page design choice is implemented well. The always present top menu can take you anywhere you want in one click. Good basic design principles were followed with color and font. And the icons at the bottom for location, phone, email, and schedule rather than being overlayed on top of their background were inlayed which was interesting. 

resto-elephant.com/

Design Verdict: Good

Website Review: Imgur (Part 2 of 5)

Imgur is for sharing photos and commenting on photos posted. Uploading is very simple and you can upload unlimited photos to your account. It is basically a feed system where you start on one post and scroll continuously, reading each post, leaving comments below the picture. You can choose to view scan through all user submissions or only the most viral submissions and you change the viewing order between, popularity, time, and highest scoring, so the amount of configuration is very minimal. Imgur maintains a very friendly user interface. 

www.imgur.com

Design Verdict: Good

Website Review: Centre for Interdisciplinary Artifact Studies (Part 1 of 5)

To start with there is no title or description and when I come back after switching tabs I may not remember the name of this art collection. There is also no backwards navigation or links. I feel like given the amount of room they could have added a title, description and outgoing links. God forbid anyone has read the descriptions for each of these artifacts as it takes four clicks per artifact all while the things your trying to click are floating away from your mouse. Lastly does a fine art collection really need to have this cheesy 3D effect?

dh.ncl.ac.uk/Identefact/Greek%20Pots/album/slide.html

Design Verdict: Bad