Week 4A: Good or Bad Design?

After researching a couple websites to find problems on, I could not help but to chuckle a little bit arriving on the www.jamilin.com website.  For starters, I had no idea what was going on, there is no inner peace on this website.  The problems on this site are many, the designs, aesthetics, and branding are cluttered, scattered, unorganized and all of the above.  It took me a while to figure out exactly what the website was about, and whether it sells something, or if it was for information.  I think the best thing is to break this website into several websites, focusing on one concept at a time. One for feng shui, one for chakra, one for reverse aging etc.  Or, they can take the main concept and create a site for that, and the other parts make several other pages.  There is too much type and not enough open space, no clearance around logos, images or text.  A lot of this needs to be spread through to the other pages. She looks really happy and pumped up, but the website is far too confusing.

The next website http://www.roverp6cars.com/ I run into similar problems trying to make sense of the clutter.  First, the links are all over images, that are low quality with red type.  The type and navigation is hard to read while various other links in red are over images as well.  The whole website is chock full of type, in various fonts, colors and sizes.  Too many sidebars and ads are competing with the home page message, if there even is a message.  They do have social media links at the bottom, but who would spend the time to find those?  The site looks like it was not planned well and thought through enough as to what a customer would like to know first.  It appears that everything was added block by block in no particular order.  This website could be improved by grouping some main navigation categories together and limiting the navigation to less words. Remove the images behind the text, add one bold image to the top with a headline or tagline, and group each feature or call to action in several boxes below that.

Arriving on the http://apple.com website, I immediately feel at ease, as the almost blank page with one bold product image draws my attention.  The navigation is clear at the top to each of their main products.  Scrolling down a bit reveals recognizable organized bold images of their other products. Each bold image takes me directly to that section all about say the iPhone X.  Each page has a lot of open space to draw attention to either the image, or the simple copy and takes me down each page in a step by step order of relevant information.  There is no question that this is apple, as the brand transcends throughout all their other branding.  

Another website, https://www.nps.gov/ the National Park Service, I am greeted with a bold banner image across the top that instantly puts me in an outdoor mood.  The information is organized nicely, with plenty of space and bold imagery that draws my eye in with minimal type that focuses even more to the headlines where I can click and learn more.  Scrolling down I see clean and organized images that show the most important and relevant topics the site has to offer making it easy to click for more information on other pages.  The menu is hidden, but perhaps because of the many types of information available, but it does look organized and easy to navigate once the menu button is clicked on.  Within the navigation there are three categories to choose information from. When clicked each new page has a similar bold banner image with minimal type and just the relevant information for each page.  Below are bold images, headlines and minimal information on each page that is relevant to that topic.  Very clean, simple, easy to navigate website that is pleasing to explore.  Since not a lot is on each page, even the small social media icons can be easily found.