MAGD 270 Midterm Critiques

Kayla Corcoran

  1. What do you think the purpose of this site is?

    Actually, it’s a little hard to immediately determine what the site is about. At first, I thought it might be about someone with the last name Tortall, since the home page has a woman’s photo and the title of the site is Tortall. I know now it’s about different books written by Tamora Pierce based in a place called Tortall.

  2. Could you find what you were looking for?

    Yup.

  3. Problems/kudos on the design?

    Pretty  nice color scheme. I just think the typography needs some work—it all looks like the same font, I think.

  4. Easy to read?

    I don’t think there’s quite enough contrast between the background (the transparent black) and the body text (yellowish). I can read it ok, but I think some people with bad eyesight might have some difficulty.

  5. How did you find the layout of the site?

    I thought it needed to be centered, and there should be some more difference between the navigation and the regular text. Also, the feather links on the sides need a hover or some hint to show that they’re links at all, and what they go to. Other than that, it’s a nice layout.

Summary: Nice design. With just a few touch ups, it’d be a good, informational site.

Zach Daniels

  1. What do you think the purpose of this site is?

    Clearly, it’s about wars in the US.

  2. Could you find what you were looking for?

    Yes.

  3. Problems/kudos on the design?

    The main part of the site definitely needs to be in its own div. It’s a bad idea to have text just sitting over a background image. Makes it hard to read, and the text stretches across the whole page.

  4. Easy to read?

    It gets difficult to read, since the text is on a background image with different colors in it.

  5. How did you find the layout of the site?

    The navigation should probably be at the top.

Summary: Seems like Zach needed help with this and wasn’t totally sure how to do what he wanted to do. Honestly, it needs lots of tweaking.

Nate Hammer

  1. What do you think the purpose of this site is?

    It’s a web site about America.

  2. Could you find what you were looking for?

    I think the links need text to show where they go to instead of just an image. Also, all the links open in new tabs. Why?

  3. Problems/kudos on the design?

    I’d edit the background picture to either tile well or to fade out on the sides so it blends in better to the white background. Also, I’d center the background (yes, you can do that.).

  4. Easy to read?

    Since the text is on a background image with different colors in it, it’s not the easiest to read.

  5. How did you find the layout of the site?

    Looks like he used the default font, which I’m not a fan of. He stuck with the red white and blue well though.

Summary: I think Nate knows what he’s doing, he just needs a little help with the design of his page, and just to double check and make sure his links work the way they’re supposed to.

Caleb Kimball

  1. What do you think the purpose of this site is?

    It’s about the show Mad Men.

  2. Could you find what you were looking for?

    No… I couldn’t get the site to show up right in Firefox or IE.

  3. Problems/kudos on the design?

    Difficult to say, since I couldn’t really view the site.

  4. Easy to read?

    White text on black background is pretty easy to read. I dunno if the main text is different though.

  5. How did you find the layout of the site?

    Again, couldn’t see it.

Summary: From what I remember seeing this site in class, Caleb had a pretty nice site design, and I can tell he worked hard at it. If he didn’t have to deal with browser compatibility issues, the site would be just about perfect.