Graphic Interface Design - Site Critique

Here are the two links for this assignment (plus one of my favorite links):


http://www.cartelle.nl/#/toys/beatmonsters
http://www.pixar.com/
http://www.plateinteractive.com/

I had an extremely hard time finding a html site, all the sites I was interested in were completed in flash.

This assignment is based on the "cartelle" site.

The navigation of this sight is not common, it took me a minute to figure it out. All of the navigation is located on the left - hand side of the template. Under the "C" it says menu, first you hover over that and then several options pop up, click on one. Once that has been completed all the options pull up along the left - hand side of the "c". If you don't hover over there they disappear. Once I figured out the navigation it was much easier for me to look through this site.

This site feels "fun" to me, this is not due to it's look but due to the first menu labeled "toys". That section consists of "toys" for your mouse to follow and move around. One toy is a skeleton and you can make it bounce and twirl etc. Another example is the birds and the bee's mouse mover. It's very addicting. I found myself checking out all the toys before I moved on to anything else in the site.


I did not see anything pertaining to a "true" hierarchy. I would click on something and it wouldn't state where I was except for in the address bar. I found this a bit annoying.

The contents of this site I found to be fun and informational. They had a section for their "toys" as well and examples of their work and information about themselves. Cartelle is a Graphic/Interactive Studio.

This website had a large variety of elements within it. First off it was extremely engaging with their "toys". Several of the toys made noise when moved around and the view was compelled to move them around. It had motion synced with the sound (only within certain toys).

I found the typography and text a bit difficult. The background was a variety of dark colors consisting of blacks and shades of gray. (It's the whole white on black thing... doesn't work so well with text.). The simplicity of the type worked well with the simplicity of the look of the website. The colors were simple, black, white, red, and shades of grey. Using these colors they were able to pull of contrasts between lights and darks. I found that the combination of colors within the site as well as their toys works well. The colors of their site and their design work did not work as well together.

Information... I felt that more information about Cartelle could have been provided. A list of affiliations as well as a spot for the blog was useful however I would have enjoyed reading more information about how it was started and not just a brief message of what they do and a few key people.

I would say that the audience for this site is other designers and those individuals in the community that are looking to hire an interactive studio. To communicate this they not only show examples however they allow the viewer actually participate in the motion.



My favorite link...

I absolutely love the Pixar website. This website contains all the info needed to feed a Pixa junkie like myself. It talkes about upcoming projects, history of the company, features previous work. It is just a FUn site. I'm not sure if this site is html or flash (the whole "right click trick" didn't work on this site).