Project #1 — Effective & Ineffective Designs
ASOS.com as Effective Design
ASOS.com is an online clothing store that sells women’s and men’s clothing. ASOS carries their own collection of products as well those of other brands like Adidas, Monki, and other designers. The styles provided are popular among young adults / millennials for their uniqueness. Their adveristisments and models portray youthful and stylish young adults which helps their audience visualize themselves similarly. ASOS.com is a fairly popular spot for buying quality and relativley affordable clothing online, espeically among college students as the site offers a student discount. Like any other online shop, this site is structured to encourage people to browse, shop, and buy.
Images of promotions, newest arrivals, and featured items are simply advertised throughout the site. The imagery used throughout are effective in the way they quickly grab the shopper’s attention. The quality, positioning, and stylization of the photographs make them successful. The combinatin of imagery and text in the bar up top make for easier means of finding what the shopper is looking for (i.e If the shopper only wants to see Adidas they can go to “Brands” and click on the photo of Adidas). As for the style of the coloring and text, ASOS uses simplicity to highlight and maintain focus on the products. The font choice and various shades of grey are sleek, minimal, and sophisticated. ASOS’s imagery and products help support the youthful and colorful side of the brand while the text and coloring add sophistication and a sense of reliability to the site. All together the layout, styling, and content of ASOS.com help establish itself as a trustworthy, high quality, and stylish source for clothing.
Photography Poster as Ineffective Design
Similar to other posters hung around campus, this poster advertises the available photography classes in the College of Fine Arts. This poster is meant to interest students in the registering for the courses. It is reasonably placed within the building of Fine Arts so that it can attract predominantly art students.
The poster’s only success is in providing all of the necessary information for a student to enroll in the classes but at first glance the layout and image choice do not make the courses seem interesting. The use of a general title and a single image does not elude to there being more classes. In addition the single image generalizes each course to the style of that one image. The font is very small and the amount of text is a lot for its positioning and size. There does not seem to be any stragery in the placement of the text in relation to the very large, and frankly uninteresting, image. The lack of thoughtful layout, the use of only one image, and the scale and font choice of the text make this poster ineffective. The poster itself is not eye catching, too much effort is required to gather all of the information, and it does not accuratly depict the courses.
