Assignment 1

FIVE WEBSITES

For a graphic design student, I think that it's very important to dabble in everything that I can. From computer science and programming to searching the web for ideas to business knowhow, I want to be the everywhere girl. What is going to be important for this entry is the web. Here will be 5 sites that I enjoy from a designer's POV and just an everyday gal's POV. 

I think the perfect site is one that is practical, innovative, and unique. Many times I just care about the content of the site, but if it's too complicated to comfortably browse the site, it would be dead to me. Take the new facebook for example. Many people think that the layout is difficult to navigate and just unfamiliar--merging the wall and events onto one collumn, but I think it just takes a minute to get used to it. I think it's pretty helpful once you know how to navigate it. The New Facebook may need another redesign, but sites like these are easy to navigate and include very useful items:

 

GettyImages 

I like GettyImages because it's my favorite site to get images for my work in graphic design. It lets me search for the images that I want by category: color/black & white, illustration/photo etc. It also gives me the option of narrowing down my search with the different types of photos. It's pretty easy to navigate and it has beautiful quality images, footage, music and resources.

KitsunerNoir

This blog is an interesting place to get desktop images and Bobby Solomon's personal review of art, technology, fashion, movies, music and design. This isn't much of a messy page, but at some times it is difficult to reach because of its seemingly busy server. It's easy to navigate, but has tons of information on various media. This blog makes me want to be an artist--I feel so inspired to be a part of the art world because of all the interesting artists, people and pieces of work that come across this blog. It is searchable but when I do search,  it will only find the searched word/phrase within each entry. 

AdvancedPhotoshop

All summer I have been looking though this UK magazine on Advanced Photoshop. It contains tutorials, images, an e-shop, interviews with techies, and many other contents for photoshop lovers. It also gives links to related sites, a simple menu that doesn't require previous memory, highlights of the magazine on the homepage and the ads are out of the way.  Most of the layout is pretty consistent and the content is browsable and searchable. 

MarkRyden

Mark Ryden is my favorite painter just for his farcical but more than Surrealist style. His site is like butter--it's so easy to get though. The navigation is great and is very simple and clean. It's not flash--makes me realize that I don't need to be "Bells and Whistles" or "Flashy" with my own site. The site and links are consistent so even when I go to his store, I don't loose Ryden's style. His site is not searchable, but it is easy to browse. 

Moo

Moo is a pretty and simple site to make personal products like greeting cards, postcards, stickers and the like. It's user friendly--especially with the big button that brings you to the meat of the site--making your product. You choose which product you want to make, and what art you want to use (personal, from Moo, from another site you know, or from Ready Made designs) and it gives you information about the artists who make the designs and other information about the materials. It's a bit of a process to get everything together, but it's not that hard to navigate and purchase the products because they make it into a step-by-step process. It's much cleaner and user friendly than GoDaddy --plus the designs are so cute, I love it. 

Sites I didn't like:
GoDaddy

GoDaddy is a popular site for purchasing your own domain name, email, hosting server etc. but it is so busy that I just get lost and not want to even think about buying anything on there. The prices for a domain are pretty cheap. I have a few reasons why I can't stand this site design:

#1 I wouldn't want more than a domain name, let alone want to purchase one

#2 How do I navigate the site without getting lost or just passing out from all the bells and whistles? 

#3  It's not user friendly enough to help the customer learn about what they are buying

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!

YTMND (You The Man Now Dog)

I love this site for its hilarious content and random webpages looped with sound. Although it's so FANTASMIC, the site is difficult to search/browse because of the magnanimous amount of data created by random users. It's hard to find a page that you love unless you bookmark it into your browser--God forbid you forget the name of it after a few months. The site is also too simple in a way because the webpages should be broken up into categories and not dates--it needs to be more useful in navigation to find files easier. 

DesignSponge

DesignSponge is a nice blog site, but it's like a mixed bag of design contents (interior design, product design, DIY, design oriented gifts, design suggestions etc...etc. I love this site for its content, but somehow I just get dizzy from the hodgepodge of different things to read about. I guess i get a bit overwhelmed with how much I can learn from this blog. The menu is not like the general menus of most sites (home, about, media ...) but it's a menu of the specific categories of the blog with a link to dominomag  for decor accessories. 

9-17-08