Sunday, February 10, 2008

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... Bigfoot?



To start off, I went to both the crop circle site and the Bigfoot site. The crop circle site pretty much gave me a headache right away just because of the font and background. It messed with my mind way too much to actually try and muddle my way through it, so instead of the crop circles I decided to go with the much more interesting Bigfoot.



The spotting Bigfoot site was easier to look at and understand. The site has a simple and professional looking black background with a white colored font and blue links that were fairly easy to read. The setup of the site was reasonably simple and painless to wade through. The makers of the site made the links easy to follow and pretty clear as to what they were connected to. The set up of the information on the homepage of the site was also straightforward and clean cut. It was a simple process to quickly scroll down the page and see the different information and links set up in an uncomplicated centered line.



The graphics and the links leading to them were great. The heading on the site was very clear and concise, stating what the site is, when it was founded, and how to make contact with the makers. I also enjoyed the video that clearly stated what the site was all about instead of having six or seven paragraphs that stated the same thing in a lengthy and boring drawl. The video was a great way to show the technological savvy of the maker in correspondence to navigating the World Wide Web and the making of a semi-professional website.



The balancing act of mixing text and pictures can be a fairly tricky process. Where should the graphics be placed? Beside the text? Below it? It takes a certain finesse and talent to find the perfect balance between the two. This site didn’t completely muck up the job, but it could have been better. As I said before, it was nice to be able to scroll down the page and see the information; however, there could have been more space between the pictures, links, and text. It made the page look almost too messy and less professional. It was a tad cluttered and could be easily cleaned up to look less amateur. For example, the entire “Expedition Schedule” should have been linked to a different page. There is a goodly portion of the homepage token up by it, but there is also a link to the schedule elsewhere on the page. It took up too much room and would have worked much better just as a separately linked page instead of both.



This website may have looked more professional with a simple homepage that had multiple links to other pages. The pictures that were posted on the homepage were interesting I admit, but did not have explanations that described them. I think it is fine to click on a picture and be taken to a page just about that picture, but wouldn’t it be quicker and more efficient to make ONE page with ALL of the pictures and explanations on it? All in all, this site does not seem very credible to me. The overall set up of the website seems a little immature. The additional pages about sighting reports are very easy to read and quite clear, however, the homepage just seems too messy. Everything is there on the page, but its chaotic mixture of scrunched graphics and bright blue linked text made it seem unprofessional and made it harder to shuffle through. On the other hand, I believe that the maker of the website did well presenting the visual argument. There were multiple relevant pictures and each page had a clear concise heading. The maker did a decent job at letting the readers know what he wished to present and make known..

2 comments:

Nichole Nelson said...

YAY! Bigfoot rules! lol :) I hated the crop circle site as well. The circle images made my head spin! Though I'm sorry you didn't like the Bigfoot site all that much! Yes, it was a little cluttered and jumbled, but I think the authors wanted people to get the picture quickly, kind of a shove it in your face deal, before the viewer closed out the site. With so much skepticism, it would be hard to find a perfect page. Though I do agree with some of your points like the calender and the big cluster of photos. Those should have been put on a separate page. Tops maybe 5-6 photos on the home page to capture attention, then go into the proof farther down with more links.
Good job analyzing it! I can't wait to see your paper! It looks like it will be cool.

Worth Weller said...

great image - thanks for sharing Kirsten!!