There's one common theme that I find in all visually stunning websites and that is simplicity. When a designer puts all his effort and focus into functionality and usability of a site, the end product is usually simple and effective. When I started looking for an example of a visually appealing and effective website I stumbled upon these two fantastic examples of a simplistic yet visually stunning design.
http://dcurt.is/ and https://squareup.com/
I used the following criteria to analyze these two websites.
- Navigation and how well it presents the content
- Visual appeal, use of graphics, contrast and alignment
- Effectiveness of interface to fulfill purpose of the site.
- Use of multimedia or graphics
- How lean is the website
- How does it look on a mobile device
- Typography
The first website that I evaluated was dcurt.is.
Dcurt.is is a blog using Svbtle as the backend software that was created by Dustin Curtis. What first struck me about this site is how clean, minimalistic and yet effective the design was. After all it is a blog, and a blog has one purpose and that is for people to read it. There's no unnecessary links or graphics on the page distracting you from the content. I like how Dustin used the frame option to freeze the links on the left while letting you scroll down the page as you read the blog. It's an effective way to keep the reader from getting distracted from the content.
There's nice use of graphics, the logo is repeated throughout the webpage in different elements. The red color is also repeated throughout the blog entries adding to the visual appeal. Left alignment is excellent with a dashed line separating blog entries. None of the graphics are over 50Kb so the site loads quickly with no delays (chrome has a nice feature built in called Inspect Element that shows you all the parts of the website including graphics that are used and their sizes). The font that is used on this site has excellent readability making it easy to read long lines of text. The mobile version of the site is just as easy to read as the desktop version removing the left side links and moving them to the top leaving just the content to read. Simplicity at its best.
Squareup.com is a website that also has a very simple layout but uses a lot more multimedia elements and graphics to drive its purpose.
The purpose of the website is to show how easy it is to process credit card payments with the square up iphone adapter. The high quality background image is visually striking and effectively presents the product and message. There's no clutter in this design with only four links on top of the page and the rest being in the footer. Use of alignment is excellent with the form being in the middle of the page and left aligned. This site also uses java script to allow you to view the interactive forms and graphic for each product. The only issue I see with the product is the lack of contrast with the links at the bottom of the page. Squareup uses high quality graphics so they're larger in size but are still below 500Kb so the site loads fairly quickly. Just as dcurt.is website squareup.com also has a mobile version of the website that is designed for the smaller screen. While both of these sites are completely different in their purpose and design, they both very effective by being simple.
I'm enjoying learning all the concepts that go into designing a great looking website. Understanding the basic concepts of great design has given me the know how to evaluate a website and determine the site's effectiveness. I find myself being a lot more critical of some of the websites that I've designed in the past and have the urge to redesign some of them. The most important thing that I learned about web design, is that all great websites have something in common, they have great content and were designed around a specific purpose. Take craigslist for example, it's one of the most bland looking websites out there but is very popular and has been around for years. When I will be designing my website for class, I will need to keep the interface simple and well organized with rich content if I expect it to be effective.
I'm enjoying learning all the concepts that go into designing a great looking website. Understanding the basic concepts of great design has given me the know how to evaluate a website and determine the site's effectiveness. I find myself being a lot more critical of some of the websites that I've designed in the past and have the urge to redesign some of them. The most important thing that I learned about web design, is that all great websites have something in common, they have great content and were designed around a specific purpose. Take craigslist for example, it's one of the most bland looking websites out there but is very popular and has been around for years. When I will be designing my website for class, I will need to keep the interface simple and well organized with rich content if I expect it to be effective.
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