Movies, Movies, Movies!

The purpose of these two websites is to provide movie reviews, trailers, plot summaries, and more for the general public.

The first, http://www.imdb.com/, utilizes all of Williams’ ideas. We see contrast on the left-hand side of the screen with royal blue print against the white and tan background, and we also see contrast elsewhere with the repeated used of bold text. Repetition is present in the use of one strong blue color, repeated bullets, and formatting patterns. Also, the IMBD logo and the same navigation menu are present on each page of the site. A strong alignment is seen with the navigation menu and with the side menu. Also, the designers created a strong alignment by using a strong flush-left alignment with each part of the body text. The proximity of this site is probably the strongest feature of this site. All of the information is neatly organized under headings and subheadings, and the navigation features make this information easily accessible.

While this website uses all of the principles Williams suggests, there is so much clutter on the screen that the information seems to get lost. There are numerous ads on each page, which not only take up a lot of space, but also take the viewers attention away from the information the page was designed to convey. Also, the many movie ads/photographs adversely affect the site’s overall unity by taking away from the impact of the main logo. Finally, a varying the size and font of the type could have added to the contrast of the page and made it look more interesting

The second website, http://www.filmcritic.com/, also uses all of Williams’ ideas. The use of contrast is very strong on this particular site because the dark maroon color stands very strong against the white background. Contrast is also present, to a lesser extent, at the top and bottom of the page where the designers placed a black navigation bar bordering the maroon one. The repetition of this site is seen in the continual use of maroon, similar formatting patterns/bullets, the repetition of the navigation bars, and the “filmcritic.com” logo on each page. Pretty much every aspect of this page is aligned with some other part of the page, although there are some exceptions in regards to the advertisements. The use of flush-left type helps the alignment principle, as well. Finally, the proximity of this page is fairly decent, as the information is organized in sensible categories.

As with the other website, this site uses all of the principles but still has serious issues. First of all, although the information is grouped well in regards to proximity, the designers seemed to use the same amount of space between a great deal of the information. Had they used different spacing throughout the site, the information could have been presented even better. Also, like the other site, the ads of this website take away from the overall unity of this page and the repetition that could be present if only one strong logo were used. In addition, the designers could have pushed the concept of contrast a little further by using different fonts and type size.

Out of both of these sites, I think that the first one is better. Based on my initial comparison of these two sites, the first one seems much more clutter-free because the designers leave slightly more white space. Also, the first site’s organization makes the information easier to obtain, while the blue-on-white (with the tan navigation boxes) contrast pops more than the maroon-on-white contrast for some reason. However, both of these sites could improve the repetition aspect of design by incorporating a stronger logo. In addition, each page would benefit from ridding themselves of or significantly redesigning their ad placement, which greatly disrupts both pages.