Web Design - Good & Bad - Research

Well Designed Websites

Lowdi

lowdi.com

"He's small and easy-going - light-hearted but very social. He's good on the phone and is a massive music fan. He's a romantic. While he tends to be a little loud, he likes nothing more than to just blend into the background and help set the scene. He looks great in black and he's not attached... to anything...Lowdi"

Lowdi's website was developed by Dutch designer Mumkai. 

You can see his project here - http://www.behance.net/gallery/A-box-called-Lowdi/5287049

This is the homepage at the top. I really like the experimental layout of the website. You can scroll down and interact with the website with videos and image scrolling boxes that all fit in with the vintage theme of the brand 'Lowdi'. The colour scheme is predominately black and yellow which matched that of the brand logo and identity but there is also hints of pastel blues, reds and creams which really reflects vintage design of a certain era and helps reassure the brand and identity of the product. 

Here is the bottom section of the website. I have seen this quite a lot on modern websites. They usually have a large section at the bottom with the important information and links out. As you can see the facebook, twitter, vimeo and mixcloud buttons work as a set and are also placed in this section with the yellow bar at the bottom with links out to FAQ's, About Us etc. 

Yacht Club Boleslaweic

Pretty cool concept design for a website for Boleslaweic yacht club. I particularly like the simple layout of the website and the use of photographic imagery covering the full screen. The white type works well to bring the colours of the branding through to the website. The logo is also used creatively to help bring excitement to the website, interactions and also bring through the branding of the business. 

Olav Weiken

WWW.THORBJOERNGUDNASON.COM

Olav Weiken is an online store which focuses on minimalistic and scandinavian fashion! With a modern approach the website is built to be responsive to it's media - always giving the viewer the best possible experience! This was created by designer Thorborn Gudnason. Again simple layout with a black bar at the top with white text. The simple layout of images and

Benjamin Critton

Designer Ben Critton has a super slick website and also is the founder of the Colophon Type foundry which also has a neat layout which is easy to navigate. 

the home page title can be dragged around and are direct links out to other pages in the site or portfolios. 

Colophon Foundry has 

Two Time Elliot

Another pretty slick portfolio based website from designer Two Times Elliot. It uses the boxes at the top for easy navigation through projects and you can also add clippings to the page which makes it easier for you to store images for artist reference. The images of the projects take up the full screen which also makes it easier 

CAAVA Design

http://www.caavadesign.com

Very nice website layout for design agency CAAVA. Sections of the website move and scroll over each other which is a nice touch but essentially the navigation on the lefthand side moves down with you too and is really easy to navigate through the entire website. Simple but effective. 

New Myspace

Not yet in existence the new myspace layout looks incredible. Its looks easy to navigate and really aesthetically pleasing. A refreshing change from the horrible and boring layout of Facebook which is constantly changing to make it more and more difficult to navigate.

Rapha

I'm a big fan of the website layout for Rapha Cycling Gear. The website it beautifully simple, using the large scale images to cover the whole window with easy minimalist navigation at the bottom. When clicked on a certain item, another window will pop up above the image, to easily view each item of clothing on sale in the autumn/winter range. 

This Is Solar

Solar is an application for Iphone which also comes with a simple wesbite. It contains links out to social media websites to help share the product as well as simple videos, an itunes purchase button and agin using the contrast of large scale photographic imagery with the interesting Solar logo atop. 

Lapka

Lapka is a personal environment monitor which plugs into an Iphone to react the the environment around you, measuring aspects such as molecules and air pressure. It's quite a nice concept and runs on a really clean cut contemporary website. There is a large logo that appears when the website is open which helps with the branding. that then cleverly disappears and you can scroll through the different products or use the simple navigation at the top to easier move around the site. 

Fine Thought

Another Designers Website with a beautifully simple layout. This uses the red and black gradient to keep a consistent theme throughout the website. The portfolio is divided into briefs that are clickable and then the interaction when you scroll though images is innovative with the addition of this red filter that can be moved away from the image. 

Minerva

Another Fashion Retailer Website. This time interactive so you can moved the images around and changes as you scroll further through the lookbook. Interesting and innovative design which works for the purpose. 

Personal

I thought it would be interesting to try and de-construct my own personal blogs, twitter page, behance page and cargo to see what I could understand from this and to see how much it works and how could I better this in the future. 

Tumblr

My blog runs on a theme called 'Syndex' which was created by Marc Kremers. This is quite a contemporary theme which uses a type and grid format. As you can see, the images that I blog are spaced out and appear as you scroll further down the blog. As your scrolling, my logo at the top follows down the page, overlapping the images posted. This is quite contemporary but also a simple and easy way of viewing the work posted, which is important. There is also an option to select the bar at the bottom by clicking a small + sign. 

The about section opens up a page on top of the blog which simply shows again my logo along with some basic infomation and links out to my other interent spaces. Again this is simple but works for the purpose. It isn't over complicated and is easy to look at and access.

My side project is called 'Abu Bakar Saved My Life' and runs on the same theme but you can see here how I have altered it to fit the theme of my project. These are scans of things that I like which i have edited to take the form of an online 'zine' . Again, the logo follows down the blog as you scroll but this time is further down and more central. 

The archive for the blog is layed out in a grid which is easy to follow and view so you can instantly click on where you want to go. Simple layout, easily accessible and works for the purpose. 

Behance

Here you can see my behance profile. This can't be altered too much so the whole design networking site is similar across every artist who has a profile. I use the same logo to keep it consistent running through my branding. The layout is a simple grid format which displays my different projects. There is information down the left hand side which is a biography and links out. there is also some information up top next to my display icon which basically states that i'm a Graphic Designer based in Leeds. On the right hand side of this box there is also information on my project views, appreciations and followers. These are all in a grid format and have black bars separating with icons to help structure the profile. 

Badly Designed Websites

Accept Jesus

This website is probably the most disgusting thing on the web I ever seen. The Microsoft Word style header is ridiculous, hard to read and inappropriate and the garish rainbow gradient use in the background just makes all the terrible comic sans body copy difficult to read and gives you a headache. 

Ron Almund's Home Page

This website is so badly designed 

that I'm starting to kind of like it. Again the use of comic sans is consistent throughout as well as the Microsoft word header making an appearance again.  When looking at the links it seems like he's randomly chosen the most ridiculous areas to place them with no sense of order and also chosen the brightest colours possible in an attempt to help the comic sans stand out from the nebular themed tiled image background. Use of scrolling text again just makes no sense to me. It's like a 90's kids dream. 

Kriegsmarine

Again, heavy use of outlandishly blown up images to the point of smoothed out blur. Also usage of terrible moving gifs is heavy. Header is off centre and in this embossed filter looking border as are the links. 

First Row Sports 

A website used by certain people to illegally stream live sports. I suppose the website isn't really legally running so they are not too fussed about the design side of things. I suppose a plus is that the navigation is fairly simple and easy to work, even if it does hurt your eyes to look at. 

SH Marketing 

Moving away from the ridiculously bad wesbites. I chose this SH Marketing site because it is a pretty good example of bad navigation. It is a Flash running website where you have to click on the circles to enter certain parts of the site. The only problem being, the circles are hard to click and you don't actually know what your clicking on, therefore have to click on every circle before finding where you want to go. Unbelievable wed design. 

Wasser

This website is again straight out of the 90's with is garish bright yellow background and 3D buttons. It almost looks like it is anti-design it's that ridiculous. Comic Sans is featured again, obviously. 

Pinterest

As much as i'm addicted to Pinterest, I think the layout needs some serious work. It's great to an extent, how you can scroll though work easily but the garbage on the side constantly telling you who has repinned you just stays there wasting half the room of the page which is ridiculous. There is also too much text above and below each image. It should just be the image which is used on the designspiration layout and then the information could be shown on hover or when clicked once. It's simple things that need to be adjusted which makes pinterest a great website to use and source but awful in design and layout. 

GMC

Another surprising choice is GMC's website. The layout is generally easy to navigate and visually it's not too bad but the font choice just ruins the whole site and makes some smaller parts completely impossible to read. Again, just basic things and bread and butter stuff ruining the site.