April 14, 2004 | View Comments (9) | Category: Version 2
Summary: Jeremy Johnson wins the March Edition
As was the case last month, the first round matched the second round. I was really curious to see how the judges went about the judging for this month since there were so many different opinions on the entries. Every entry garnered a first place vote from at least one of the judges, which was none too surprising. I will no longer bore you with my words and get straight to the action.
I had a tough time with this one, because Jeremy's design has some basic flaws that need to be fixed. The Parallel design is both missing a lot of basic things and feels too much like a commercial enterprise application web site, even though as a design I like it better than Jeremy's. Ah well... The problems I have with Jeremy's design are easily fixable, whereas the overly commercial feel of the Parallel design is part of it's appeal.
Jeremy Johnson's design was simple and straightforward. His use of color and photography worked well with the over all layout of the page which is now much more focused. The download section I could see being extremely useful and his navigation is clear and clean. Overall it's a very nice, very usable-seeming design.
The use of white space, subtile colors and clear, easy to read conservative use of text is what makes this design shine. The design is not overwhelming or distracting. The lighter colors in the navigation add that subtile touch that just works well, but not so much that it is noticed. Good design should be transparent and that is exactly what is accomplished here. Parallel Vision
Why Michele? It was a tough choice, but I thought, out of the three, Michele's design was the clearest. There's an immediacy to the colors and text treatment. Nice and bold. I like the upside-down tab images (a styled, unordered list) and the markup structure is lean and as semantic as possible. Heck, there's even a print stylesheet :)
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"(V)ery usable-seeming design."- I'd like to point out that if you increase the winner's tiny text size by even one level, it becomes unreadable, words falling under the sidebar. All three entries have text-resize issues. Do the judges use any objective criteria, or is it completely whimsical? I thought for sure the winner would be one of the other two entries. As a beginner, JJ's was the only entry that I looked at and thought, "Take a photo, dropshadow, some square tabs, sidebar, I could knock that out in a couple o' hours." This is not a personal attack or a case of sour grapes, I'm trying to learn from people who's work I admire mr. Johnson's included!) Tell me where I'm wrong here.
Hasan (http://hasan.gopages.net/)
Hasan -- These are just mockups, not full designs, as such they need to be looked at in a different manner. Not to mention, us judges are busy people and we don't get paid for this.
I acutally did resize the text in all of them and Jeremy's looks just fine in Safari at least, so I'm not sure what the problem is. I didn't check them in multiple browsers.
To be honest, I felt that all of these had some problems, but nothing overwhelming and to be honest I had a very hard time choosing. I rather liked them all.
In the end I chose Jeremy's because I felt the problems with his design would be easiest to over come and I liked his use of color and photography.
Any one of these could have easily been the winner as they were all very good for what they were.
If you can knock that out in a couple hours, more power too you. I look forward to looking at your entry in this months Version 2 contest.
Try judging one of these some time. It's more work than you may think. ;)
Keith (http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/)
Keith said it for me...
I actually preferred the aesthetic approach of Parallel's design, but it lacked a lot of basic things on the screen. These things needed to be added and would create a different design once they were.
Further, like I said, the Parallel design felt overly commerical to me. Not a bad thing, but I wasn't so sure that was the right direction for the audience or the "client."
As Keith said, Jeremy's design had some flaws, but all of them were very easily addressable without largely affecting the overall design.
Andrei Herasimchuk (http://www.designbyfire.com)
(^_^)// to finalists.
I voted for Michele, because I believe her work presented the most complete package. Her work may require a bit more vertical scrolling, but she makes up for it with a repeated menu. (^_^)V
Jeremy's work has a very catchy imagery, but the way the information is presented isn't as accessible. This may be attributed to less white space and his headers do not stand out well enough.
I found Parellel to be “templatey”. The images evoked the wrong impression in me.
Zelnox
Gentlemen, thanks for weighing in with what you liked about Mr. Johnson's design. I don't know who will see this now that Whitespace is on hiateus. I should have prefaced that I thought all the designs were great, and I shouldn't have implied that I could create an entry in two hours (I couldn't) and that it would be better (it wouldn't.) Neither of you really answered my question though, which is what is the judging criteria? Or perhaps you did, which is that it is fairly subjective, in which case it would be easy to judge, Keith. Andrei, that's twice in this post that youve implied that it was a two site contest for you...what was it about the third entry that made it less successful? It seemed well layed out, it looked fantastic, the logo redesign was incredible, what made it week? What can I LEARN from this contest?
I guess my main question is to Scrivs, whose been questioning what his site redesign should be about. Well, you have a contest, what's it all about? Is it a teaching experience, is it to draw attention to your sites, is it a competitive thing? I doubt I would put hours into attempting a redesign of the incredibly complicated IMDb site but not know what it was being judged on.
Hasan (http://hasan.gopages.net/)
I really thought they were all very close. I judged on layout, usability (which is hard with no users), clairity, branding, aestetic design, content presentation, etc.
It's hard to say any of these sites are much better than the others. They all have minor problems.
What it came down to, at least for me, is that design-wise I prefered Jeremy's and I felt that it would be the easiest one to work with.
When you have three designs that are all good and close in perceived functionality (I say perceived because with no users to test with and not a lot of time to really delve into the usability, accessibity, etc of a site, all you have is best guesses) you just have to pick one based on somewhat subjective critera.
As far as what you can learn? That's up to you. I'm just a judge here.
As far as what Version 2 is all about? Ask Scrivs, again, I'm just a judge here.
Keith (http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/)
Hasan, the purpose of the contest is really to learn by looking at the designs of others. You have one site to redesign and you get 30 different interpretations. From these 30 you get 3 that are considered the top by a vote of your peers. By looking at these 3 you can see what many designers find important.
Sure the aesthetics play a huge role, but you will also see in many comments that if the design doesn't fit the theme of the site or the IA is completely off then the design just doesn't work. At least that is what I have learned (okay I knew this already) from the contest so far.
Granted last month's design didn't really get to stretch the creativity like the first month's did, but I think this month will be a different story with so many different interpretations.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Thanks for your thoughtful responses guys. I respect you both a lot. Look for my entry down the pike as my skills evolve.
All the best, Hasan.
Hasan (http://hasan.gopages.net/)
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#1
Congratulations Jeremy!
It's been a tough competition and I'm happy I've made it to the final three.
Getting a vote from one of the judges has been a honor and at the same time it makes me want to work harder and improve my skills to do better next time.
Now back to work on April's site...
Michele (http://michele.f2o.org/)