Drew, Interactive Media Student.

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Competitive Analysis Portfolio

Professional- http://www.outofthetrees.co.uk/index.php

This site belongs to ‘Out of the Trees’ which is a collective of freelance designers.

This site starts out with a standard home page that fills the screen. It has a brief description of what they can offer and an image and testimonial of previous clients which randomises each time you visit.

My first thought is that the page, although provided all the necessary information looks to spread out and that the content is too weighted to the left with a large gap in the lower right. This is subject however to the site having a variable width and when I reduced the size of my window the site actually looked much more appealing. I can understand the benefits of a variable width but personally I would want to ensure that my design was being viewed at its best by the majority. As far as I am aware most people wouldn’t be viewing this on an 800px width screen.

The main section of the site is the portfolio section where you can view examples of their work. I think they have got the navigation of this site spot on. The number of examples they have put on is not too many to put you off looking through and is enough to provide you with a decent choice to sample.

The way in which they have laid this out is to provide a snippet of each image in a small square. The squares are animated and enlarge once hovered over and by clicking you are taken to another page.

The page then provides further details about that brief and you can view the image in its entirety by clicking on its file name. The image opens in Lightbox. I like the fact that they have used Lightbox as I think this is an effective way to display work as it doesn’t mean navigating away from a page. I personally feel that keeping the amount of navigation low is priority and that by doing this you keep your viewer happy. I dislike it when I go onto a site and I have to hit back ten times to go back to my search results or a previous page. It would be something I will keep in mind on my own site to keep this to a minimum; I think a good way of doing this is to have links open in new windows as theses can be closed once the page has been viewed. I think that using Lightbox is something I will also want to incorporate into my own site as this will also mean that viewers won’t have to navigate far from my homepage.

Overall I think this site is successful; it has a tasteful colour scheme, simple navigation and good content. The only downside is that I think that should have tried to keep the number of page transitions lower once looking at the portfolio. Once in the Portfolio and having clicked on the image I want to view I think it is unnecessary to have to find a further link and click that to finally view the image. I think it would be much smoother viewing to have it instantly pop up. Obviously they have written content to accompany their images which is why they have done this but I am sure that another arrangement could have taken place so that if you wanted to read further you could then navigate to that information.



Student- http://cleanandeasydesign.co.uk/index.html

Clean and Easy Design is the portfolio site of Paul Mackenzie who is a current student at Leeds Met University.

Firstly I like the look of this site, the colour scheme reminds me of my own ‘Grass Roots’ page. The layout and style remind me of www.adobe.com with the use of the drop shadow and at the bottom of the page there are some icons that show what he is proficient in which are not unlike Adobes own.

Despite the similarities I think this is a strong design for a portfolio, the separated sections break up the content which makes it appear more interesting and less of a chore. What I do feel is that it is almost twice as long as it should be for a home page. Personally I think that a home page should be a brief introduction to the site on which no scrolling should be required.

Once you click on the Portfolio section the site maintains its overall look and you move seamlessly to the portfolio section. My main concern would be that all the content is off screen but this isn’t a great concern.

One thing I did notice is the spelling mistake of the word University and also that he has pointed us to the left of the portfolio page to see contact details even though this is actually found on the right.

Other than a few minor errors such as this I feel this is a really strong site in itself although the work it is promoting isn’t as strong. The best piece on the site is the site promoting the villa which has taken a possibly dull site and make it look contemporary and fresh.

http://www.holidaycyprusvilla.co.uk/ what I would say about this though is that to view this site, by default, you have to do it within the same window which means if you want to have a good look around going back and forth through pages you are not getting back to his home page in a hurry, this unfortunately happened to me.

Overall I think this site is really strong and I even had a look at the CSS to see how he has set his navigation to show the selected page which as it turns out is just going a .selected version of your navigation. This site has definitely given me some food for thought.

2 Comments:

At Monday, February 11, 2008 at 12:08:00 PM GMT, Blogger Ben Waller said...

I think you have analysed a really good competitor with the student from Leeds Met as he is probably going to be applying for the same jobs as we are!

I think that his site does look effective but is quite confusing in some areas. To the right hand side of each page are graphics to do with contacting him. These however are not actually links and do not do anything which I found quite confusing.

The link for the "handy form" on the second graphic only appears when the mouse hovers over it. This means that you are extremely unlikely to click on it unless you stumble across it which is a poor design feature.

 
At Monday, February 11, 2008 at 1:41:00 PM GMT, Blogger Julian Dyer said...

I think liquid designs (ones with variable widths) are dying a death. The availability and ever lowering cost of widescreen monitors means that liquid designs arn't really suitable. The character length goes into the hundreds, which makes reading text a nightmare. Sounds as though a fixed width site is on the cards for your portfolio.

I like the use of texture in the student website, I think it stops websites looking so 'flat'. Of course, care must be taken to keep the contrast between the text and the background high, or people with eyesight difficulties may have problems reading from the page.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home