Blog Response: USI Web Site Critique

What works:
1) The academics program page is put together very well. It is visually appealing and straight to the point with the information it provides. The picture also makes the university look beautiful. The way a university looks is somewhat important when deciding what college to attend. No one really wants to go to a rundown school.

2) The flash box on the home page tends to use a good choice of slides. It is also very appealing and draws the eye in.

3) I am glad we use our school colors throughout the website. It shows a since of pride, which is always a quality many students look for when deciding on a college.

4) I believe that the first tier landing pages such as, Prospective Students and Current Students are very strong. They are visually appealing, use great pictures (action shots) and the information being portrayed is easily understood.

5) The USI Fast Fact feature I found on some of the first tier landing pages is a very strong element. I wish there was one on the homepage.

6) I like the easy access from the home page to the Rice Library site.

What doesn't work:
1) The myUSI link has been a major complaint of mine since the e-mail, blackboard, etc. has been redone. I do not see the need of having to go through two different pages after the home page. I would like to be able to click once and have my e-mail, blackboard and etc. up.

2 ) Although the flash box on the home page usually uses a good choice of slides I feel sometimes (like now) the slides are lacking luster. It is the first thing that catches your eye when you arrive at the home page, therefore all of the slides need to be strong and represent USI as a whole. Actions shots are great and they bring life to the site and create an image of the life at our school. I feel all of the images on the site are stronger when they are action shots.

3) I feel it is very important to have a map of the campus and pictures of each and every building. I did find links to maps at the bottom of the home page and under Plan a Visit but I feel it is important to give it more emphasis. It is important to many prospective students to know what USI campus looks like and how to get around. I remember when I was a freshman and I was nervous about finding my way on campus I went looking for a campus map, but it took me forever to actually find it and once I did the map was not very helpful. I am glad to see it is now moved to the home page, but I still feel it could be positioned better with more emphasis. Moving it more toward the top on the home page would be a good first step.



I do feel we need more school spirit on the home page. Using Archie would definitely be a start.

I believe another thing prospective students are very interested in seeing is a list of clubs. Clubs help get people involved and bring life to campus life. Therefore, I believe it should be featured on the home page. If you used the USI Fast Facts on the home page then that could be part of the information.

All of the expectations I have mentioned were some that I and many of my peers had when I was looking at colleges, so therefore I do agree with the expectations.

I believe it is very important that our site looks more academic. Though commercial entertainment is appealing, we need to keep focused on what each and every one of the students have in common and that is the academics.

While browsing the Internet looking at other school’s sites I found that our site is stronger than some big name schools. I felt like our home page is stronger than IU’s and UK’s. This is a great complement considering they are some of our biggest competition when students around this area are looking for a college.

University of Cincinnati (www.uc.edu) has very strong main links. I like how the main links are right on the side/on top of the main picture slide show. When arriving at usi.edu your eyes are first drawn to the flash player on the website, so why not move our main links such as myUSI, Rice Library and etc. up right on top of/to the side of the flash slides like they have done on the University of Cincinnati’s page. I think it would be a smart move.

MichaelDavis45

I think you made great picture choices on this site. The pictures bring the site alive. I like how the gnome on the index page helps create a border around where the text is. On the left side of all the pages it looks like you missed a spot when you were erasing or fading the background out. That spot kind of bugs me. It makes it seem like you just did it really fast, without care. I think the index page should pop a little more compared to the 2nd tier pages.The placement of the main picture on the Bird Bath page is kind of awkward.

Aristeia88
I enjoy the clean cut idea you have going on. On the index page some of the words are hard to read on top of the grass. I would suggest a bolder font and maybe something more readable. If I had more time I would go back and fix mine again and choose a font a little easier to read. You might use more elements from the index page on the 2nd tier pages to help bring the site together. I like the layout idea you have going on in your 2nd tier pages, but I feel like you should eliminate some of the white space.

wademayer
I really, really like the cartoon feel this site has. I really appreciate your skills in Illustrator. I like how you took the advice from the critique and used an element from the home page on each of the 2nd tier pages. It really helped bring the site together. On the miscellaneous page I think there should be a border around your picture since you went with that on all the rest of your pages. You could have simply just forgot to apply one. On the index page, I think it would be better if the deer wasn't in front of the 'n' .

Lawn Art Assignment

For this assignment, I wanted to go with something more sophisticated. I had taken some beautiful pictures of a garden so I wanted to base my theme around them. I then came up with the idea of having a lawn art company, Classy Greens, who focused on the creation of water features, such as waterfalls and streams, for yards and gardens. (This is the reason for the waterfall feature in the center of the homepage.) Within their site they would have a homepage for lawn art statues, and that is what I created. Since I was going for the sophisticated look I wanted my layout to look very elegant and clean cut. I did this by use of font type, creating a since of balance and symmetry, and etc. All of the statues I chose are elegant pieces as well. I also used a consistent, abstract-like grass background, which helped tie the entire layout together. I felt like the use of borders around each piece helped bring the layout together as well.

Art Club Layout and Website Critique

mdavis.willyworld.org
In this piece I especially like the idea of creating a clipping mask. All of the objects inside of the clipping mask represent a different form of art or USI. I also like the use of the paint/colored pencil effect used for the background. For the most part the piece comes together wonderfully. I might lighten the blue on top of the USI logo if possible. The white text over the paint effect is a little hard to read in some spots. Like Chuck said, it would be neat if the student pictured was in the Art Club and won an award that the Art Club put money towards.The site itself shows the caption to the picture overlapping the picture. A few minor changes in Dreamweaver could fix that.

andy.willyworld.org
I enjoy the simplicity of this layout. I like the abstract flower effects used as a type of side banner. I am interested in knowing how the flower effects were made. The background design is kind of hard to see, but I enjoy the subtleness of it. The effect used behind just the one letter "U" is kind of distracting to me. It draws my eyes to just the letter "U" but that could quite possibly be a smart move since that is where the text starts.

mtravis.willyworld.org
In this layout I am a big fan of the open notebook idea. I like the fact that the text is easy to read. The hand drawn elements bring a lot to the piece as well. It is somewhat hard to make out the words "Art Club" on the ear of corn. Possibly working with different effects in Photoshop would help bring out the letters a little more. Maybe a different color of paint would help too.

When I was first starting out on this project I knew I wanted to do something cool with paint, but I had never messed around with paint before so I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I got seven tubes of oil paint, laid them out on a white sketch pad and tried to squirt it out so each would make its own line of paint. I am kind of a perfectionist when it comes to certain things, so you can imagine the time it took just to get the “perfect line” of paint. I’d say I redid them all at least three times. By the third time I didn’t have enough paint in each color to go around, so I took a picture of it and stuck with it. I luckily had enough blue paint left to use as letters to spell out “USI ART CLUB.” Using the paint to create the letters was even more interesting than the lines, but I thought the “not so perfect” look would work. I also took a picture of ears of corn (representing Fall Festival for the Art Club) and different “art tools” such as, a sharpie, charcoal pencil and so on. When picking my objects, I wanted to obviously have them relate to Art Club but I also wanted to be able to represent different forms of art, such as painting, charcoal drawing, graphic design (in putting the elements together through Photoshop) and so on. I know I couldn’t possibly represent all forms of art but I tried to get a variety in there.

When I finally got on the computer and started putting the page together I decided to use a black background so that the different colors of paint would kind of pop off the page. With so much color from the different lines of paint and the lettering I didn’t want to overdo the page so I kept a lot of the rest simple. I also wanted the writing to be easily legible. In the end I decided not to use the ears of corn because I couldn’t find a way to incorporate it into the picture. I used the “art tools” to kind of create a side border for the Art Club information. My three elements ended up being the tubes of paint lines, the Art Club lettering, and the “art tools”.