Final Designs

These are photos of my final design. I have to say I am pretty proud of myself for implementing Javascript to make my pictures change upon reload. It took many hours to figure out but I am so glad that I suck it out and made it work. I like that I included that since my design is fairly simple.

Homepage and Subpage Designs

After trying to make the page a bit darker to feel more fancy I found that two dark made the place look deathly and so I picked a happy medium. Instead of incorporating a gray or black backround I stuck with the tan and just made it darker. I also took my "reserve a table" and "donate" and included them in the nav bar to make the design more clean. One thing that I enjoy about this layout is the space it has. There is not a ton going on and having that white space around it makes it more appealing to look at. The last thing I wanted to do was fill it with clutter especially because it is a gourmet restaurant.

For the subpage all I did was took the middle section out and filled it with the story of how this was established but one comment that I recieved from class was that on my first page my pictures extend to the end and line up with my social networking sites. In the final copy of this I took the cardboard behind the content and extended it to the end and incorporated the red door from the Bowery Mission which is where money can be donated through our site. The red door was a symbol of all is welcome and is an important to the people that run it and the people who go there. I wanted to make that a part of the design because I felt it was an important part of the place and it needed to be represented.

Edge of Society Homepage #1

This whole project was a bit of a challenge. I liked what I was doing with the photos but the "Reserve a Table" and "Donate" section just wasn't working in the design at all, not to mention the ampersand did not really do it any justice. It looked incomplete and something needed to change on it.

Edge of Society layouts

I did not really care for any of these as they are but I took bits of the second layout and made a new background that was more suitable for this site and the feel I was going for. It is hard to really find that right material for a place that has two totally different feels. Edge of Society is a resturant that is both gourmet but also a bit grunge and it was difficult to get the right amount of both for this site.

Edge of Society Site Map

Here is a site map of my Edge of Society it features Home, About, Menu, Location and Contact as well as social networking links that will appear on every page. Online Reservations and Donate will also be on all the pages since both are extremely important to not only the restaurant but the customers.

Card Sorting

I was unable to get anyone to do the card sorting online but I did have a few people of different ages set these cards aside in the order that they thought was best. Here is an example of one:

Mood Board

This is my mood board. This restaurant is somewhat based off of the musical Rent and the Lower Eastside of New York City. It is a gourmet restaurant that serves expensive street food and is a rough and dirty looking place that really sets into the time period of when things were tough with poverty, drugs and aids. The restaurant donates so much of every meal to the Bowery Mission in New York City. I wanted to incorporate rough textures and some deep colors to really represent people in those situations as well as a bit of grunge materials.

Content Audits

We had to make three content audits based off things associated with our restaurant site we will be making. The first is from Hallo Berlin Restaurant which is a poorly designed site but beyond that there is some things to say about it. With two locations, and two menus I thought it was nice to have two seperate pages for that as well as being able to select the text on each page, no pdfs. I do think that the location section of the webpage is unnecessary since the two locations are shown on the homepage, that is one thing that I will be eliminating from mine.

The second audit is for the famous street vendors King of Falafel. They give a nice introduction  about themselves on the first page as well as important information like their phone number as well as their phone number. I think it is nice that they share their recipes with us and I enjoy the way they show their menu with pictures, giving a visual idea of what they food looks like.

The final audit I did was on a more fancy restaurant since mine is a bit more on the classier side. I felt it important to get some ideas of how to set my site up from a restaurant that would match up with its scenery a bit more. One thing that I noticed about gourmet restaurants is that most use flash in displaying their material which can cause a problem for people with smart phones. That is something I will be leaving out for the pure fact that many people would miss out on information they might be in need of. While I enjoy the way it looks visually it looks more like a venue instead of a restaurant because they do not really display any of their food. I think sometimes it is important for people to see the quality they are getting and this site lacks that.