Gabe Khouli - Final Site

Final Site

Gabriel Khouli - Beta

Beta Site

Choosing the Right Fonts: A Guide

Building off of what Rob talked about last week, in order to choose the right font you have to an idea of what you want the font to accomplish:
1. What feeling or emotion do you want the font to ellicit?
2. Is this font tied to a site-constant theme or is it being used for a separate, specific purpose?
3. Do you want this font to stand out (headline, logo) or blend in (body text)?

General Rules:
Don't use more than four fonts in a Web site design.
Avoid combining two or more serif or two or more sans-serif fonts in the same project.
Serif headline with sans serif body text is becoming more popular, but sans serif headlines with serif body text is also perfectly fine (more traditional)

A Guide for Choosing the Right Fonts:

1. Finding the right font family

http://www.fontscape.com/ - A good tool that groups and lists fonts.

http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/classifications.html - Another good tool that groups Adobe fonts. It has a cool word testing tool for fonts.

http://www.bsu.edu/web/ucspubs/pdf/other/typeface_classifications.pdf - Another guide for helping you choose a font family.

2. Comparing fonts and other stylistic options

http://typetester.maratz.com/ - A tool for comparing font and paragraph styles side by side.

http://www.fonttester.com/ - This is another good tool for comparing fonts.

3. A General Resource

http://typophile.com/ - (named by Beaird in the book)

Newspaper I interviewed with

On Monday I interviewed with the St. Petersburg Times newspaper and in preparation for the interview I looked at their site: http://www.sptimes.com/home.shtml. I have never liked their site, which I have been to in the past.
I assume it is templated since it is part of a combined Web site for the Tampa Bay-St. Pete area. They have some really interesting drop down menus when you scroll across their top navigation bar. There is a lot of information to digest.
They also have way too many subject areas on their page in general, as you can tell by the small vertical scroll bar.
They do a good job in general of presenting the most important information on the top of the page. But they have a separate site for breaking news, which is weird, although I suppose not a terrible idea.
Overall the organization is OK, but the layout is not appealing.
- Gabe

Badwill

I remembering working on a research project on the Daily Show and going to the Web site to try to find information. It was frustrating because the Daily Show's web site had no contact information, and I had to look around for half an hour to see if there was a way I could purchase or freely obtain Daily Show episodes for academic research purposes. Because the site does not provide a contact phone number, you have to send a message, which was never answered and finally after searching I found a FAQ that said they don't sell episodes of the Daily Show.
Upon return, the site seems a little better, the FAQ isn't too hard to find and the Comedy Central store has a phone number listed. But, for someone going there hoping to buy a season of a show, he or she will be sad when try to search the Web site for information.
In general, the hiding of contact information and refusal to sell even entire season of the Daily Show diminished my goodwill for this site.
- Gabe Khouli

A Web Designer's Web Site

Since Ch. 8 talked about the battle between designers and developers, I thought I would look at the sites of some designers to see what they looked like. I choose Virginia/California-based Web Designer Epsilon Concepts http://www.epsilonconcepts.com/. This site has a bright colored, fairly clean Web site, with flashy animation in the main banner. Those elements are consistent with features contained on designer's Web site. The pages also take some time to load on my computer, possibly because of the animation. One annoying thing about the site is the fact the banner animation starts over again every time a new page is loaded.
- Gabe

"That was easy."

Similarly to Michael below, I also chose the corporate Web site I used for my TCOM 354 Web site critique. Staples.com is a simply designed and text heavy site, at least on the main page, but it is easy to use and its easy for people to find the product they are looking for.

The site has a breadcrumb trail, but it is a breadcrumb trail that only includes the last page of the site you visited previously, not all of the pages going back to the home page. The site has a consistent design, a simple tabbed interface, a company logo that acts as a home page link and access to most parts of the Web site from the front page.

One of the most annoying features of the site is that it asks first time users to provide their zip code information when you first try to click on anything. All in all, I think the site is well organized, if lacking on the aesthetic side.

Dog Days of September

One site I check on a nightly basis is mlb.com, the site of Major League Baseball. The site definitely has a clear visual hierarchy with a single dominant picture on the page. The picture is of the top stories of the day so it is justified in being there, however, it's not immediately obvious that you are able to change the main story picture at will. This takes a bit of thinking. There should probably be a "Top Stories" header. The information is organized well, because most fans are most likely going to be interested in the night's scores and the latest news which are at the top of the screen on the left and right respectively.

So, overall the site does a good job of initial information hierarchy. However, the second dominate element is either an ad or some contest, but it's difficult to tell at first and not something I want to click on because it looks like it could be an ad. Either way it is unclear and require way too much thinking.

The rest of the information, below the fold is kind of oddly organized in my opinion, because it seems that the standings should be played up bigger. However, here once again, the headings are quite clear (Video, Fantasy, etc.) and people know what they are clicking. The site effectively uses bulleted lists to display and organize information.

Another Web Usability Expert

Jakob Nielsen is a Web usability master according to his Web site:
http://www.useit.com/
"Don't Make Me Think" actually references an article from useit.com in one of the page notes. The site fascinates me because it is so simple; mainly text on a white background. It looks like a Web site that would be designed in TCOM 101 and yet it is the Web site of a leading Web expert. However, there is no doubt the site is easy to use and is clearly organized. The site has obvious headers and titles, and there is no question as to what can and cannot be clicked. On his site he explains that he leaves the site in its bare bone nature to make it standout and because he is not a designer nor artist himself.

In addition to the site, I choose the 2007 Webby winner of the year for Naviagtion/Structure, http://demo.fb.se/e/ikea/dreamkitchen/site/default.html
to give people an idea of what has been chosen by experts as a great site.

- Gabe