Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Critique - Jessica Biggs and Andrew Lebowitz

Jessica Biggs

Overall a pretty atypical web layout. The content is spread through pretty designer-ly areas, perhaps too much attention to graphic design and not enough to the ideas of web design.

Not to say this site template is bad in any way. The tiling background is a nice touch that really sets the stage for all the content. It's certainly not hard to read either. Good contrast ratio making the text very legible and easy to read. So far I'm interested in seeing more work from this designer.

The couple of things I may take issue with are the fixed elements that move with the window borders and the placement of the lower left imagery and "scrolling" content.

The fixed elements are definitely a nice touch but I found when viewing the site maximized (as I know many people do as well) it seemed vast and empty. I was wanting something to fill the space more. This second party could be related: I thought the "scrolling" content where the greeting and the vertical images are while very appealing isn't using its full potential. It may just be an ultimate Graphic Designer decision to have the larger text there at about halfway down the page, but I feel either it could be scooted up to reveal more content and then having less scrolling going on or not displaying the vertical images there at all (or in a different manner, horizontal images?). I think right now that space hasnt really found its purpose quite yet.

All in all a very good page that's very promising in its potential to deliver some amazing stuff.

Andrew Lebowitz

Very slick.

Nice classic usage of square icon thumbnails (thumbnails right?) that are stacked in an interesting fashion really activating the interior space right where we need to be looking.

It's so simplistic it's almost damaged by the fact because it almost seems like theres not enough to show.

The background image is full of personality letting himself shine through albeit in a funny and half cheesy way.

The orange and white scheme plays well with each other and really gives the slick contemporary designer feel. I think this type of playfulness could be .. well.. played up a bit more.

Overall, it's serves it's purpose very well. And that's all it needs to do but gives the viewer a bit more to consider just in its presentation.