ortablaze opened this issue on Jun 06, 2003 ยท 8 posts
cambert posted Fri, 06 June 2003 at 6:49 AM
My first thought is that it's extremely smart: I'm impressed. Clean lines, unfussy, and the work you have in your portfolio is beautiful. Some of those corporate logos are so expressive and genuinely lovely - never thought I'd say that about a logo :-) Now for the problem: it's a nightmare to navigate. The section links on the outer 'wings' (Profile, Services, Portfolio, Contact) are very hard to see because there's almost no contrast with the backgound. My eyesight is fine, but someone with even moderately bad sight could easily miss them. There's a similar problem with the tiny slices that link to the individual images, under Corp ID and Photo. They're so small that it's hard to tell which one you've clicked. Also, if you want to go back to a particular image, they're much too small to tell which image is linked to which slice. In the end, it comes down to guesswork, which means that you've taken the control away from the viewer. I felt like you were making me work much too hard just to find something to look at, and that I had no meaningful choice about what I wanted to see. That's quite alienating, and it distracted me from looking at your work, which is what I wanted to do. And again, someone with visual difficulties wouldn't stand a chance. As I said, though, the work that's there is wonderful. I would have welcomed an option to see larger versions; perhaps click on the image for a larger version in a pop-up window? Final point is the 'Web' category. If there's nothing behind it, you should really remove it. As it is, it's another option denied: removing control from the viewer again. If it's on the page, it should deliver something. The same goes for the 'Flash' option on the front page - it's irritating to be led down a dead end. Overall feeling is that it's a really nice site, beautifully laid out and full of excellent content. All that's needed is for you to put the control in the hands of the viewers. Then they'll remember an experience, not just a web site :-)