Web site design and Information
Koby Creswell
BIM Fa15

I decided to do my analysis on a website over the Centre for Sustainable Design because it is something in my free time that I really hold a passion for ever since I was introduced to it about four years ago. The design of a website, as a whole, still involves many of the same principles as a linear document. That is, contrast, alignment, repetition and proximity should be consistent throughout the site. Choosing logical flexibility within these design elements can enhance a website to a desired level. On the flip side, overemphasizing differences between pages can lead to a poor design. The following analysis strays from applying the design principles in a traditional sense as I take a look how they are applied to the document as a whole.
The Centre for Sustainable Design maintains a simple, yet professional appealing website. Style decisions using contrast on a black background for the homepage give the site a preliminary degree of credibility because it has been made known that the majority believes that white and black contrast is the easiest to read. Of course there is a san-serif font, like most other websites because serifs seem to be more difficult to read on a computer screen. Repetition in the focal graphics on the homepage begins to lead the audience to a comfort level within the site. The general template remains the same, with the navigation being on the left and the top, maintaining its black color and when you click one of the main focal points on the homepage, one of the four pictures, it takes you to another page that still have that same picture/focal point to a degree. Specifically, the repetition of size (170x142pixels), color (greyscale), and angle variance in the graphics create a complimenting montage. Each of the repetitious graphics also lead way into the article they represent.
A repetitious feature is also utilized in the navigation bar above the graphics. A mouse rollover displays a description of each topic area. The text appears on a white-on-black contrast in the upper right corner, again leading the audience to what lies within the page. However, once the site is entered, the navigation bar loses the rollover feature. They could have simply copied the code from the homepage and changed the color of the text to allow for the repetition of the rollover feature. This would allow the audience to read the descriptions from pages within the site to determine their interest. The authors of this homepage may have guessed that the user would have looked at all the rollover information before deciding on which part to click on, therefore, making the rollover unnecessary in the following pages. However, making assumptions like that usually are not what really happens, the design should be the same throughout, with the same rollover text as the homepage to help the user-friendly aspect. Doing this also helps show your ethos by displaying that the authors were thinking about this as a potential problem and are doing their best to deliver the right information in the easiest way possible.
Another failure of repetition is found in the graphics of each navigation bar topic area. After creating a blending montage for the homepage the Centre fails to keep the same size, color and angle variance of photos in the topic areas. Even though it was mentioned above that the focal points remain the somewhat the same throughout the page, they are still not totally the same by any means and could be made better if they were. For example, the resources area has a color picture of a bookshelf with size 124x151 pixels. To remain constant they should have saved the photo grayscale and resized it to as near 170x142 as possible without distorting the image. The same repetition errors can be found in each topic area of the navigation bar. I would also like to address errors in proximity relative to the layout of the website. Each of the focal graphics on the homepage offers a link to a journal article published by the Centre. Well, the graphics lead the user to believe a link is offered to the article. The rollover on the graphic would suggest a link to the article.
Instead it just a link to the journal area, a page that describes the journal. The rollover displays the name of the article and the issue number with publishing date. It is the job of the user to find the proper links to while memorizing the article title to read the desired piece. The related items are grouped nowhere together, and add a degree of difficulty to find the relating article. This also hurts the site's credibility because the information is not easy to get to. Digging around the site to find the text you are looking for shows poor organization and proximity is lessened.
At first glance, The Centre offers an appealing website. However, clicking further reveals a few small design mistakes that tediously discredit the content. Each page was designed fairly well standing alone. However, detailed differences can pile up within a site. When publishing in an electronic format, it is as important to consider design elements as a whole as for each individual page.