What really attracted me to this site is how straight forward the navigation and content is. Clearly the user is defined as lovers of graphic design looking for new innovative ideas of where contemporary design is headed. The site is actually more of a store than any kind of personal site for a person. I’ve never seen any of this material before especially some of the books that they offer to visitors. I think it is great that they have a main navigation and a secondary navigation at the bottom just in case one doesn’t work. One thing that I noticed when the CSS was cut off was that the images didn’t have any alt descriptions but they included descriptions of the items underneath the items…so that makes up for it. I think there is a lot of negative space that is unused that could be utilize. This makes the layout of the page seem too floaty.
Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
I’m sorry but I feel that a website made into a interactive music video is a great idea. This is a very brilliant approach to the genre because I’m a fan of their music for one and two the style truly fits the music. Some of the iconography could be explained a little more to and to the visitors but overall I think the design is well thought out. Navigation through it is pretty clear because it is very linear since you have to sit and watch the video play through. I don’t see how this benefits anyone that is handicapped so there is a flaw for reaching a certain demographic. Also it is done in Flash with no duplicate done in HTML so…people with horrible bandwidths will have a problem struggling with running it smoothly.
Model+
Now this is a web site that completely floored me with its approach to navigation and user engagement. The simplicity of it really grabs me because there are no heavy item that detracts away from rolling over a picture and watching the connection it has with the right navigation. The bottom navigation offers up the ability to select a model by their gender, weight, height, etc…which is kind of weird but if you’re an agency searching for someone this is vital information. The main audience of course are agencies searching for models but I can also see the models themselves coming on to the site to check out their information. The blog link offers a view in the model’s career from different jobs that they showcased for. I think that is a good idea since when you click on the images you only get personal information but nothing about jobs themselves.
