Noisecontrollers New Website

http://www.noisecontrollers.nl/

Their sites been offline for a while and was in need of a makeover, it's come back online now and although they only have the front page up it looks better all ready, done in Flash and was made by Coen van Hal, will put more up when the site is fully running.

Flash version of my Ocean Blue Website.

Ocean Blue Website by ~Hardstyler01 on deviantART

Final design for restaurant website

Restaurant Website Designs.

No 4. Wood Street Restaurant.

No 4. Wood Street Restaurant.

http://www.4woodstreet.co.uk/home.html

At first glance I was thinking to myself that this site would be a bit hit & miss in terms of design and it is but only in some areas, and to prove my point the first part is on the home page, the use of comic sans on just takes the edge away from the rest of design, not to mention the spacing error between 2008 and the ampersand, a minor error I know but still, it looks unprofessional from a design point of view.





Going further into the site there are some good points to make, the ‘about’ page is designed nicely with images splitting up large portions of text to keep the eye relaxed, this is again shown on the ‘restaurant page’ but using slightly images as it’s main use is to give the user an insight of what the restaurant looks like.





The menu page is does what it says on the tin, but again some errors in grammar let’s the page down and then when you reach the bottom of the page the comic sans font returns and lets the design down, I also think that the menu could have been done over two pages as this would have suited the layout better.





The special events page is for me, terrible, the font size changes too many times and distracts the eye, plus again the misuse of spacing, I feel it could have been done a lot better.



Overall the site is good for information and I suppose that’s what the restaurant owners would be more focused on, but there are some flaws in the design that let the site down.

Fashion Restaurant.

http://www.fashionrestaurant.com/fashion_aboutus_08_05.html


This website is done in posh kind of style to fit with the style of the restaurant, it looks professional and has a nice design and layout although I do feel the main part of the site could be a little bigger.



The information get's straight to the point and is relevant to what the site is about and is set out well, there are pictures at the side and top of the information to give the eye a rest from text, and again this works well.

Going further into the site there is more useful information about menus, what the bar has to offer and a link to there other restaurant site for the Sinatra, which keeps the same style layout as the Fashion site.





The online booking form on the site is a good addition and I feel the site should have been the same size as this part of the site as it means there is less empty space for your eyes to wonder into.



The menu page is a pop up window and uses the same style layout as the bookings page and shows their range of meals as well as a wine & cocktail list.



The site is nice, easy on the eye plus it works well, as stated above I do feel the main part could have been a little bigger but it’s not a big problem and doesn’t take anything away from the site.

The Maid Marian Restaurant Website Review.

The Maid Marian Restaurant.

http://www.maidmarianrestaurant.co.uk/

The website is done quite nicely and looks very clean and professional, the layout is good and the information is easy to find, the navigation is set out well and the page is not cluttered with needless images or information.

The home page gets straight to the point with a description of the restaurant and a short description of how things are ran in the restaurant, I think this a good thing as it gives you an insight of what to expect when you are dining there.



Again the layout of the site stays the same when you navigate to other pages and uses a different image on each page in the header, the images are relevant to the page and it works well with the site.

As you’d expect from a restaurant website they do have a menu page, well two to be precise, which are both done well and keeps the main course meals and other dishes separate, they also have descriptions of how there stock is obtained and how it is cooked at the top and the meal descriptons have information about what they contain.





Other pages include special occasions, where to find us, information on the wine list and a contact page which all keep to the same layout and contain relevant information about the restaurant.

The right hand side of the page contains different information for example, the opening times, customer comment and special offers, there is also a little fault in the text box as the text overlaps the actual box.



The site all in all is very well done and contains lots of information about the restaurant, I can’t really see any negative things about the site except for the overlapping text on the right hand side menu which can be easily fixed.

Mcdonalds Website Review.

McDonalds website.

http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/

The layout of the site is good, very clean and everything as its own place and is easy to see where the information you want is, the navigation is average but blends in with the background a little bit.



The layout of the site stays the same over the whole of the site which is good as the user doesn’t loose track of where the information is.

The site is Flash based and shows some good use of this in forms of image slides and surveys that take in the information on what you think about the food and ingredients of the food and it also used in the navigation which is one the downfalls of the site, when the navigation is clicked on a dropdown menu appears which then pushes the main information down the screen and if your using the bottom navigation at the same time the main information is covered up. The bottom menu automatically appears once the main navigation is clicked upon which gets annoying after a while as you have to keep closing it to see what information you are looking for.





Going further into the site there is a restaurant locater which again is Flash based, it doe’s work very well and as a filter which means you can narrow down your search depending on your needs and area.



There is good use of pictures to keep the balance between text and imagery and this is easy on the eye and keeps the user interested in the site, the images are also relevant to the content of the site.

All in all the site is good but could be improved in parts, the parts that could be improved are not major but the site would benefit from them.

Peer Reviews.

I Think this went really well today and it was nice to get some good feedback on my work, I'm making some changes to my work with the comments that where brought up in the review.

I Feel we should do this again with future projects.

Ford Mustang site update.

Started to put my site together in Dreamweaver today, I’m not particularly strong in Dreamweaver but so far it is going well and it is looking how I want it to, encountered a bit of problem with text as I can’t get it to overlay my background image but I’m looking at this problem now and figuring out how I can get around this.

More layout designs.

Finished off my Photoshop mock ups for my layouts for the site.

Loading Page Designs.

Two loading page designs I have done, only difference at the minute are the logos but I am experimenting with other designs at the minute, these designs will eventually be animated in Flash.

Ford Mustang Uni Project Work.

Layouts.







Banners.

Website project work.

Although there doesn’t seem to much about my project on my blog I have lots of interesting ideas for how I can produce a good website on my chosen subject of Ford Mustangs, after looking through my designs and looking at other websites based on cars I have started experimenting with taking elements out of my sketched designs and mixing them up a bit, this has given me some good results as well has some results that maybe wont work, but the ideas are there even if they don’t, I also feel I have learnt a lesson in doing this as I usually jump straight in Photoshop and Flash and don’t do much work using the good old fashioned pen & paper method.

Car Websites.

Seeing as I am doing my project based on cars I thought it would make sense to look at some more car websites to see if I could get any more ideas to add to the ones I have now, after looking at a few websites such as Auto Trader (http://www.autotrader.co.uk/) , Desperate Seller (http://www.desperateseller.co.uk/) and Old Classic Car (http://www.oldclassiccar.co.uk/) I have come to notice that they are all very untidy and not very nice to look at, Old Classic Car is probably the worst of the three as the text is very close to other parts of text that is a part of a different section, this is very confusing and makes you loose track of what you are reading.

The other two website are very similar in design and again the pages feel cluttered and have lots of adverts on the side, the adverts are relevant but I feel that they are too big and take up too much space on the page.

Again as I said in my post below it gives me a good opportunity to create a cleaner cut website that is easier on the eye and more user friendly then the sites I have looked at.

http://www.fordvehicles.com/cars/mustang/index.asp

http://www.fordvehicles.com/cars/mustang/index.asp


This is the official website of Ford Mustang vehicles, the site contains information and pictures of the vehicles, this is good as it is relevant to the point of the website, however the site design itself is rather boring and could be a lot better in terms of layout.

The first point is that it is aligned to the left which is annoying as it would be more suitable and easier to view if it was centred, the whole website is done in Flash and it works well but some of the features are just there because they felt the need to include them for example the 360 car views, which are well done and look good but slightly pointless as your hardly going to spend time looking at the vehicles from various angles, then there’s the colour selector which again works well but it’s hardly going to be used.

The parts of the site that are useful i.e. specifications and price range are well designed but the layouts are quite cramped together, when you click on the vehicle range page there is no enlarge image button which is a shame as the images are quite small and look squashed which doesn’t give you a good view of the car.

Another thing I have noticed is that if you click on other vehicle range’s such as SUV’s the window fills more of the page, which leaves you wondering why the hell didn’t they do that with the whole site, it’s just a strange website from start to finish.

Hopefully I will be able to solve some of these problems in my designs and come up with a more functional layout.

Website Proposal.

I am planning to base my three page site on the Ford Mustang vehicle range, I have chose to design my site on this is that they are one of my favourite range of car and I have some interesting ideas on what I can design for this that have come from my inspirations post below.

It will also give me a good choice of layout and styles of the pages as I can develop my site in the style of how the design of the car has evolved over the years.

http://www.wildridexm.com/

http://www.wildridexm.com/

This site is about satellite radio for cars, although it doesn’t really make it clear what it’s about until you click one of the links in the bottom corner which then brings a window up that explains the site a little more.

The site lets you take control of a car with a hippo and a giraffe placed in and they just drive down a long stretch of road through places that shows you what type of music you will be able to listen to on satellite radio.

The design of the site is good but nothing more than that, it’s done in a sketch type of style using only black, white and a little bit of yellow, his makes it a bit boring to look at for long periods of time as there’s no variation in colour to give the user something more to look at.

The content is relevant as it is all music orientated with different samples of what styles you can pick up on the radio, and as there is not much more on the site I’d say that this is the best element of the site.

The content is clearly organised but the most important content is in the pop up windows which again isn’t good design as you would always think the main content would be one of the first things you would see on the site.

The interactivity of the site is mainly done by the arrow keys on the keyboard as you get to control the car using these, the arrow keys are also used to navigate the hippo in the help the hippo game, which is quite dull and looks exactly the same as the main site but from a birds eye view.

There is another game called flip the animals which sees you having to flip animals off a car bonnet into another car, again done in the same style as the main page.

There is also a video clip called ‘Heaven’ which features a dinosaur of some kind run across the road only to be struck down by lightning and sent to Heaven where he is given a car that features XM satellite radio, which then presents us with the slogan ‘In Heaven, all cars have XM’.

So, my final thought on the site is that it could have been much better in quite a lot of senses, it’s not pleasing on the eye and I was quickly looking away from the screen to give my eyes a rest from the same colours, the navigation is set out at the top of the page as well as on billboards that appear at the side of the road.

www.allstategarage.com

This is a website about Motorcycle’s and has help on insurance quotes, route planning, safety tips and other useful information about motorcycling.

The site contains a lot of Flash elements including rollovers, moving images and videos, the links are pictures and are relevant to what your being linked to i.e. the plan your next ride page link is a road map on the garage wall, there are lots of links on the page but it is set out very clearly and it also has the links across the top of page so you can find a page without having to find the picture link in the garage view, I like how they have done this as it is easier and quicker to find what your looking for, another element of the links above the garage door is that when you hover over them, the relevant picture glows up in the garage view and vice-versa.



There is also a little game that allows you to build your own bike(which I spent a little time doing), you get a lot of choices on what colour, style and accessories you want on your motorcycle and also get to place it on one of four backgrounds then save it at the end, there is a little problem with this page, there are some black bike objects, which are placed on a black background, you can barely see that they are there, I feel they should have made the background lighter or maybe added a border around the bike objects to make them stand out from the background.



The plan a route page is just like Google Maps but focuses on good routes for touring across America, this is good addition for riders who are planning a cross country vacation and don’t know about the roads, there is also links to submit your own routes or check out the top ten routes.



The garage TV page features videos of advice from the people who work at the company, these videos are about road safety and how to prepare yourself for a safe journey, this is a good page as it shows you lots of safety videos on how to check you oil and other stuff on your bike to what clothing is suitable for riding and what hand signals to use to indicate to the riders behind when you want to stop or turn.



After going through the site and looking at numerous pages, it’s really hard to find faults in the site, yes, you might get confused by looking for links in the garage, but they have made sure you can navigate your way through the site easily by placing links at the top as well, the sites very well spaced out and nothing interferes with each other, the only bad thing is the game section with the clashing colour’s which could have been avoided by having a border around the image, but apart from that minor error, the website is spot on for design work and information.

Website Reviews.

http://uk.playstation.com/home/

The Sony website contains lots of information on a wide range of products, I chose to look at there Playstation section, the site is cleanly set out and is easy to navigate around and the design of the site is basic and contains an element where the background colour changes with the information displayed in the slideshow.

The page features a slideshow at the top with news on forthcoming games and features and as separate pages for individual consoles such as the PS3 & the PSP, the information is relevant to the purpose of the site and is updated regularly with news about new features and games that are forthcoming on the Playstation platform.

The content of the page is set out neatly in tables containing information about the product as well as screenshots and videos plus information on the manufacturer and developer along the side of the main information boxes.

The interactivity of the site is easy to use and works relatively well within the interactive elements such as slideshow controls, video controls and within the navigational element of the page.

The only problem I have encountered is the colour changing background, I found it distracting whilst reading information on a page as I kept looking at the side of the page when the colours are fading in and out and loosing track of what I was reading.