USI Website Critique and Comparison

There are only a few things that I think works for USI's website. The site is easy to navigate and the all the important news and information are easy to find. Searching for a specific item or page is simple because the search bar is easily recognizable and the results page is usually very helpful. Sometimes the search results are completely wrong, but that happens on most major search engines too, so not a big deal. I like how the calender and the campus news are together in the middle of the page, but separated enough that they aren't running together.I like the left side navigation a lot. It's very simple and clean. I would take the tabbed links on top of the site, and move them into the left navigation box. I feel that the tabbed links looked out of place and ugly.

I like the main and important news and images that scrolls at the top of the page. It catches my attention every time I load the page and makes me want to read the stories. That being sad, I feel that the size could be reduced some. Right now it, the scrolling news and images seem to dominate the page. I like the very top USI name and logo. I feel it fits well with the pages theme and is very clean and simple. I also enjoy the faded picture behind the left navigation bar. It makes the navigation box to stand out. The images in-front of the main news and events in the middle of the pages is also a good touch. It catches my attention and sometimes make me interested enough to read the article. Sometimes however, the images have nothing to do with the news and/or events. Few times I saw images that seem to be thrown there because they didn't have an image for it. I feel that the site needs more images of USI students and of the campus. The site offers some good images, but not a good variety.

I feel that the USI website needs to have less colors. Right now, the site looks like a clown puked on it. It has way to many colors and hurts my eyes if i stay on the page too long. I understand that they are our school colors, but there has to be a better way to have the colors on the site. I do think we need either more pictures on the site or arrange them better to make the site more eye friendly. Less color and more or better use of images would make USI's website more appealing and easier to use. I would also like to see either a reduction in the amount of navigation bars or a combination of the similar navigation links.

Prospective students expect to find the campus's news and events on the home page. I believe that USI's website succeeds in doing that. They also expect either links to admissions or information about classes and the college. I think they would also like to see pictures of the campus and of actual students at events or around the campus. Which I feel the website needs. They don't care about accreditation stuff , sponsors and foundations. I would rather see more stuff about events and news that are going on around campus. More pictures of the campus and students make would make me feel like the campus cares about the students and are proud of their campus.

Right now, USI's website looks way to "flashy." It has a lot of good elements, but it has to much. Anyone visiting the site for the first time wont want to stay on the page for very long because it's not very eye friendly. The site needs some "flash" but looks like the designers threw everything they can think of that's appealing on the page.

I personally love USI's News and Information page (http://www.usi.edu/newsinfo/index.asp). It's very clean and easy to navigate. I like how the main or important news stands out over the other news. The picture and how they did the headline draws me in and makes me want to read the whole article. I also like that they have photo gallery or show on the right side. The left navigation bar is really easy to navigate. It's simple, clean, and categorized so you can find what you need quickly. Finally, I like they bring over the homepage news and shows other important news and events that are happening on campus bellow the main news article. This keeps the students well informed without navigating through multiple pages.

I absolutely love Purdue's website (http://www.purdue.edu/). Its very very clean and not flashy. They use their school colors very well in the design making it easy to the eye. I like how they did the scrolling pictures for their main news or events. It's easy to navigate and very appealing to users. There isn't a lot of different navigation bars and is very clean; which makes navigating the site very easy. The way they placed the search bar is also nicely done. It's easily recognizable and doesn't dominate the page or design. Purdue used the same format for their news and calender like USI. Its very clean and students can be informed without being overwhelmed.

Lawn Art Website Critiques

Finally got approval to see peoples twitter posts, so here are my Lawn Art Websites critiques:

Tlwildman (http://tiffany.usi-artspace.com/):

The objective of this site is to show the many lawn art around Evansville. I love how the website is very clean and simple. There isn't a lot of clutter and text that most people have on their sites. I also like the glass grass design behind the menu. It's a great design and fits with the theme. The menu rollover effect is also a really nice touch. I especially like how you added the white outline to the text so it would be easy to read.

There are only few minor things that could be improved. I would add the page titles bellow the pictures in the menu on the home page. Once you visit a link, you see page titles on the navigation bar on the bottom of each page. Another thing I noticed, is that you have two links to the home page on each sub-page. One should be enough. Having two might confuse people. The last thing that noticed that might need improvement, is that the home page image of the waterfall is out of place. I can see it connects to the outdoors and this is a lawn art website, but it doesn't really have anything to do with lawn or art.

What I would first add the sub-page titles bellow the main navigation bar on the home page. That way, it would be easier to navigate and tie a little better to the navigation bar on the sub-pages. I would also remove one of the home page links on the sub-page's navigation bar. The last home page link might be the best one to remove because people naturally look for the home page link at the front of the navigation list; not the last. Lastly, I would replace the waterfall picture on the homepage to something that relates more to lawn art. Maybe do something like you did for the homepage navigation bar but with a different picture. Besides those things, I really enjoyed this website.

MichaelDavis45 (http://mdavis.willyworld.org/LawnArt/):

The objective of this site is to show the many lawn art around Evansville. I was impressed by this site the minute I saw the homepage. I love how you combined the background color with your design. Most people, including myself, have our website and then have a colored background that stands out from the website. Your website design flows together well with the background and makes it look like one large image instead of two separate designs; website and background. I also love the typeface that you used. It's not too fancy, but at the same time, it isn't boring like Arial or Times. I like the rollover effect on the navigation bar also. It adds a nice design element to the site.

There are only few things that I believe needs improvement. The navigation bar moves too much for me when going from page to page. One page it's on the right side, then it's in the middle of the page on the next page, and then on the left side on the next page. I also believe that the text on the homepage is too cluttered. Finally, the navigation should maybe have either a label for each sub-page, or a rollover title for each link.

I would first make sure the navigation bar stays in the same place from the homepage to each sub-page. I suggest keeping it where the navigation bar is placed on the homepage. This way, the navigation bar is easily accessible and not jumping around from page to page. I would maybe reduce the font size of the text on the front page so it fits the green box better. Right now its cluttered and the last few words are kinda thrown at the end of the text. Reducing the size should allow a nice flow of the text and make it less cluttered. I personally would like to see some sort of label for the navigation bar. Either add a title bellow each link or have the title pop up when you rollover the link. That way people will have an idea what the page contains before clicking the link. Besides those few things, I absolutely love the website.

Aristeia88 (http://michael.usi-artspace.com/main.htm):

The objective of this site is to show the many lawn art around Evansville. I like the background image of the website. It ties in well with the lawn art theme and eye pleasing. I also liked how you have a variety of categories instead of a few basic ones like other Lawn Art sites. The pictures you chose for each category are really nice and fits really well with the each category and theme. The font face and color are nicely used and really stands out from the grass background.

There are a few things that I believe needs improvement. The navigation bar on the main page blends with the background image too much. It might confuse a lot of people when viewing your site. I feel that the page runs too long on each sub-page. A lot of scrolling usually causes the viewer to loose interest and leave your site. I also believe that the pictures should maybe have some sort of labels. Right now it looks kinda thrown together.

I would use the theme you used on the sub-pages on the homepage. Right now, the homepage seems to be a completely different site then the sub-pages. I would then reduce the size of the pictures on each sub-page and maybe put them in a column format or a place them randomly on the page. Might even pick two or three of the best pictures and remove the rest. This will reduce all the scrolling and wont make people navigating your website to loose interest. I personally would add a small description bellow each image. This makes it more website oriented then just a photo gallery with a lot of pictures on each page.

Lawn Art Website Design

For my lawn art website design, I decided on the "Crazy's Lawn Art: Evansville, IN Edition because people have some really crazy lawn art around their yards that felt looked good; for some reason. And since we were asked to take pictures of lawn art around Evansville, I decided to add the Evansville, IN Edition.

I tried to stay on the simple and clean side while designing this website. I first used the grass paint brush tool to make a lawn design that was simple and clean looking, but graphically nice looking. I then imported in a picture of a lawn gnome that I took that was in a neighbor's yard. I edited out the picture's background and remove the mushroom that the gnome was leaning on. I picked the lazy gnome because i liked the way it was laying and thought i could make it lean on a sign post that could be used as the menu navigator. I decided on the old wooden sign because I saw several similar signs while taking lawn art pictures around town and thought that would be a great design to use as the menu navigator. Each wooden board on the sign is a navigation button because it separates the links and continues the the simple and clean look. I decided to categorized each navigation button to make it easy to navigate and allow people to find specific pages or design easier.

On each page, that shows the lawn art pictures that I took, shows an edited version of the picture with a short description of the lawn art piece. Behind the short description, I added a transparent box to separate the text from the blue sky background. I edited the sign menu to make it smaller so it wouldn't dominate or draw attention from the lawn art piece. I also removed the lawn gnome because I felt it would cause the design to look busy.

That's my design. I hope you all like it.

Some Art Club Critiques

Here are my feelings on some of my classmate's Art Club website designs:

1.) leverly.willyworld.org;

I really like the design that was created here. All the elements seem to connect to form a unified design. The brown background helps the colored paint spots stand out more, but is a cool design itself at the same time. I think the colored spots were done really well. It really looks like someone spilt or threw on some paint on a brown background but transparent to show the background style and design at the same time.

The USI Art Club text really fits well with the design. It looks like someone painted the words on the brown background. I also like how the USI letters are white to represent and show the abbreviated form of our schools name. The Art Club text is also nicely done. It keeps with the same paint style as the USI text and the paint spots but is separated from the other text so there wasn't cluttered together.

There was only a few small things I didnt like about the design. The first was the bigger yellow paint spots. It looked to 3d and didn't match the other paint spots on the design. I could be a representation of corn kernels but i doubt it was meant to. The other thing I didn't like, was the Art Club information text. I like how its white to keep with the same style as the other text, but it was hard to read in places.

Overall, I believe this is a great design for the USI Art Club website.

2.) andy.willyworld.org;

This was a cool idea for the USI's Art Club website. I liked the flower watermark in the background. It looked really good and connected the elements in the design together well. The design on the left is nicely done. I liked the how the flowers were designed like a silhouette with different colors that stood out on the black background.

I liked little design behind the U in the USI Art Club text. It added a different style to the design that worked well. I also liked the decision to use black text. It stands out well on the white background and is east to read.

There is only one small thing I didn't like about this design. It's a small thing but there should have been a hard enter (space) between the first and second paragraph. The text is too close to each other and is hard to read after awhile.

Overall, good design.

3.) twildman.willyworld.org;

I really liked this design for the USI's Ar Club website. The paint tubes at the top were done really well. It ties in well with the art theme of webpage and the paint that's coming out of the tubes adds a special element to the design that I've never seen before. Not only does it really look like paint is coming out of the tubes, it also draws the eyes down to the main information in the middle of the page.

The USI Art Club text is also nicely done. It continues with the squeezed out paint theme and really looks like someone squeezed blue paint on and wrote the text. The blue color also stands out well on the black background. I thought the art supplies on either side of the main text was a good touch. Not only does it continue the art theme but it also fills up white space to complete and tie in the elements in the design.

The only thing I didn't like about the design, was the main text. I do like the choice of using white text so it stands out on the black background but it doesn't fit with the theme and style of the design. Everything element in the design, including the text, had some sort of artistic style. The main text just seems to plain to me.

I really liked this design and think it would work perfectly for USI's Art Club website.

My Design for USI's Art Club Website

The design I created for the USI Art Club's website is different then normal websites that people are use to. I added a sketch book to a drawing table that i made look like its been used in an art class. I made paint smears and splatters and pencil markings like the table has been used for quite sometime.

I added doodles to the sketchbook as if this belongs to a student and was bored during class. All the doodles are hand sketched that i scanned into photoshop and added to the composition. Everything, besides the main body, pencil, and faculty advisors, were also all hand-drawn and added to the composition in a way it would look if a student just throw in the information in there sketchbook.

For the remaining text, I went online and found a really cool text type called chilly. To me, it looked very similar handwriting, so I used it to look like someone hand-wrote the information into the book.

I added a pencil, because i thought it needed some sort of art supply that would tie in all the elements together. I scanned in one of my own art pencils then imported it into photoshop.

Finally, i added a ink spill in the lower corner to add another common art element to help tie in the composition. I made it look like an ink container just got knocked over and spilled over the art table and the notebook laying on the table.

There you go, that is my design for the USI's Art Club website. I hope you all liked my design

Back from 3 Day Weekend

Had a pretty fun holiday weekend. Didn't do much besides hangout with friends and watch tv. Waking up at 7 this morning was awful. Classes today should be pretty easy but I still would like to be in bed though.