When deciding which website to evaluate for good design principles, I hedged my bets. No one does art like MoMA, and I need all the help I can get as I navigate these unfamiliar waters of design. The website works in so many ways, but after the tour through Krause’s basics, I am beginning to underpin my, visceral “I love this site” reaction with some rhetoric for explaining why. I’m sure that is a goal of this course.
MoMA utilizes the grid system, but not rigidly. The header is divided into three columns, but the columns are of different widths. The art exhibit is featured by a complete header images which changes to a right-hand side narrower, film-strip-like series of images representing all offerings at the museum and a left-hand explanation literal “pop-up” from the bright red “Exhibitions” tab. The navigation is unique and unexpected, defying the typical mundane grid structure. Information POPS-UP as opposed to the expected “Drop Down.” This works to place emphasis on the additional features. Colors work to do this as well…red, black and white.
In the middle of the home page, the standard grid form offsets the unconventional with three evenly spaced information columns. The fonts are consistent, varying only with bold and regular, allowing for harmony. The hierarchy is clear from the header…the ART is predominant, but there is no dearth of the necessary “nuts and bolts” of the business. The white background , the clean margins, contribute to the order of the space despite the variety of visual art represented in the moving images.
Flow is clear, both in the movement and in the way the eyes are drawn to the bottom, the navigation. because it is unique, one wants to see what develops as one clicks on the stationary navigation at the bottom. While it is an unusual approach the tags at the bottom are clean and small, echoing the font used in the information section mid-page, except in all caps.
The three different levels of the web page show clear attention to placement and emphasis, achieving visual harmony.
Now for my foray into design…ARGH! Her’s what I learned from doing the Mini compositions…fluency must be attained by pushing through initial resistance. I railed against doing this, but by the last four boxes or so, I was having more freedom with my pencil. I also wanted to be able to more effectively manage the space. Initially all I wanted was to fill the damn rectangles! (I have to apply this to my discipline, writing, and realize that this applies to those students I teach for whom the free writing exercises that I do with them seem like torture…like them, I’m sure, the possibility that something good will come is met with skepticism. (I do like the feel of soft lead on thick paper and was actually pleased to find that I had kept some drawing pencils from a class I took many years ago…not that I’ve used them since then!)
By Joseph Mischyshyn + ArséniureDeGallium [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons guitar
“Guitard Epiphone 03” by Rama – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 fr via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Guitard_Epiphone_03.jpg#/media/File:Guitard_Epiphone_03.jpg bass
By Steve Snodgrass from Shreveport, USA (Texmaniac Uploaded by AlbertHerring) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons drums