Blog #3

The different principles of design were pretty interesting concepts. In the world we live in today, we are constantly being exposed to different graphics and design, whether it is seen on tv, internet, magazines or just on advertisements we see all over. I never really thought about what exactly goes into creating the different designs, but after conducting this week’s readings, I can now notice why some designs are more standout than others. To put this to the test, I decided to pick a website that I sometimes use, to see how well the graphics used compare to what we read about for our class. The site I chose was the website for the streetwear clothing brand Supreme. The website could be found at: http://www.supremenewyork.com. I will list the different principles of design to see how well Supreme followed these guidelines.

1. Balance- The homepage of the website has a very symmetrical balance. The options to click on to navigate through the site are just listed down the middle, without any other design located on the left or right.
2. Proximity: As mentioned in balance, all of the options are located down the center. In addition to that, they are evenly spaced, very neatly lined down the middle. It makes it very easy to see what options the user can click on.
3. Repetition: The entire option list uses the same font, making it very easy for the reader to navigate through the site, while also acknowledging that the repetition allows the user to know that the listed words are the options to click on.
4. Contrast: Contrast is the most noticeable part of the website. The entire background is an extremely faint picture of the logo, but it is so faint that the entire background at first glance appears to be black. The logo itself shown at the top is extremely noticeable, due to the use of the color red. The options to go through the site are white, so against the black background, it is impossible to miss.
5. White Space- White space is known as the absence of any text or graphics. The majority of the home screen appears to be black, so white space is heavily used. Even if you click one of the options, such as “news”, the majority of the next page is blank white space, with little graphic and text located in the center.

Those rules were found in the article, Principles in Design. The next set of rules will describe whether the site did or did not break the rules mentioned in, 10 Web Design Rules That You Can Break.

1. Use a minimal number of font faces- Supreme did not break this rule. On the homepage, as well as the other pages on the site, only one to two fonts are used.
2. Do not use too many colors- Supreme did not break this rule because on the homepage, only three different colors are used. The only time I have seen a large number of colors was when the clothing featured on the site contained those colors.
3. Make your site’s goal obvious- Supreme did not follow this rule. If I did not know the brand, I would not know what was featured on the site by looking at the homepage. The only hint that might give away the idea that they are a clothing brand is the option to click “Shop”.
4. Use different colors for the text and backgroud- Supreme both did and did not follow this rule. When looking at the very faint picture in the background of the homepage, you can see that it did not follow that rule. They placed a black picture on top of a black background. However, at the same time, the heavy contrast from the black background to the white words show that the rule was follow.

Stick to web-safe fonts- I would say that Supreme did not follow this rule. Although the font used is readable, the font size on the homepage is a very small font. With the small size, combined with the font used, it can be somewhat difficult to read the words compared to other sites.




For part two of the blog post for this week, I decided to follow the procedures on page 87 found in Design Basics Index. These procedures focused on adding more images to a flyer or a design to bring more life to it. When reading those directions, I automatically knew what I would be using for this process. During my student teaching experience, I designed a culminating project where the students had to pick which historical figure they thought to be the most important at the time of the revolution. The students would go head to head in a March Madness tournament style project. When I created the info sheet, I knew that the page was really boring, but I was very pressed for time, so I did not get a chance to enhance it a little bit. So for this portion of the blog post, I had the opportunity to place some pictures in the different positions. The pictures I chose are either related to the March Madness tournament, or Revolutionary figures, such as the Founding Fathers, Molly Pitcher, and Crisps Attucks. I picked those to show the students that there are a variety of people to choose from. As a warning, I am very new to the design process, so the pictures might seem a little basic.

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