Project One
Effective and Ineffective Design
Effective:
A couple summers ago I was looking at wedding jewellery with a close friend and came across Brilliant Earth. Brilliant Earth is a jewellery company that focuses on cruelty-free, custom jewellery. This website is intended for jewellery shoppers, more specifically those that are looking for wedding bands and rings. It’s online, and the company has expanded its reach to digital marketing platforms, such as that on Facebook. The goal of the design of the logo is to show the intersection between the environmental mindfulness of the products and the jewels that the products contain. The website design itself seems to draw your eyes towards the beautiful pictures of models wearing the jewellery, that teases you just enough to make you want to click through a little further. As someone who used this website, I can say that my attention was strongly drawn towards the main images on the site, and I found myself clicking through designs before even realizing the unique aspects of this company. The soft serifs on the font are not too daunting, and work well with the elegance of the jewellery being advertized. I also appreciate that black is used to pull attention away from the somber grays that border the homepage, as it allows the image to pop and speak for itself. There also aren’t too many colors on the page, so it isn’t overwhelming to look at. The icons and menus on the page are also very simple, minimalist, and in gray, giving the page a very clean look. This page speaks elegance, and works well in complementing the product it supports.
Ineffective:
When2meet.com is something that a lot of students at Carnegie Mellon encounter. The aim of this website is to help users find common times to set up meetings. It is readily available online. The goal of this design is to direct the user towards the tools they need to set up their When2meet poll, but on a desktop the elements are awkwardly spread out and hard to read. The page itself contains a LOT of negative space, which could definitely be used more effectively. Additionally, while one can scroll through the calendar on the left, there is no indication of this feature at first glance. The font throughout the page is also very small, making it unclear which part of the page needs your attention first. Furthermore, the place where you are supposed to type in your event name, is not clearly a text box. The message that is being communicated is a little unclear, because the “Plan a New Event” tab is too subtly highlighted and swallowed up by the black bar above. The only difference in font around the page is in size and color, which prevents distractions, but also lacks direction. The donation bar at the bottom could also be placed in a less random location. The yellow sticks out like a sore thumb in the large black box below, and could easily be moved to the top of the page or made larger and placed further down. This is the element that clashes the most with the others. While these elements work together at a basic level, they lack a sense of cohesive direction. A layout with elements arranged in accordance to the order in which they need to be interacted with, and with less negative space, would be both more compelling to look through and easier to understand.
