For the second part of the assignment I posted last week, I will take a look at some of my classmates’ work and review it.

First I would like to take a look at Emily Jackson’s design for “Black Rabbit Media”.

I got excited when I saw this because I really enjoy the aesthetic of well-used negative space. As a matter of fact, it immediately made me think of a piece by one of my favorite artists, Aubrey Beardsley:

I really enjoy Emily’s choice of colors to contrast with the black and how she integrates organic shapes into a very graphic, modern design. I absolutely love the thistle navigation and imagine it having very charming rollovers when finished. It may do better a little smaller, though, to better balance whatever content she may add and not to overpower it.

The feel of the top title is great, but I think she could take a little more time to integrate the organic branches/trees into the rest to make it look more like a horizon. It would look far more seamless and integrated – a far cry from the stark, clear boxes and forms of a government website or a bingo sheet, but purpose dictates form in web design. Something Beardsley accomplishes in his work above is he utilizes the interesting shapes and details that make up the women to bring the flat black forward and make it more intriguing; perhaps that can be done by some tweaking with the shape of the horizon and the forms of the trees? The logo in the center could also be tweaked in size to create better balance.

I also think the gradient could use some more definition, perhaps by adding some glints of stars in the indigo where it gets darker?

I look forward to seeing how this turns out!

The second person’s work I chose to review is Mike Irish’s, especially his “outside the box” idea:

He stated in his description that he plans on using Flash to warp the shapes when clicked and morph them into elements of whatever page you’re directed to. I think that sounds pretty awesome and I’d love to see it come to life. The only issue I have with it right now is that while the concept is pretty great, the example he posted makes me wonder if he plans to put more work into the concept before bringing it into Flash.

The black-to-white gradients don’t work very strongly and the “star” background reminds me so much of the Photoshop default gradient options that I feel it could use some more time for the sake of uniqueness. I would like to see how the shapes might change for each page before I comment on the arrangement of the ovals.

Another great thing about this design is the simplicity, something he also mentions in his description. I can see how using lots of colors and different shapes would be distracting from the content so this might be an ideal starting concept, but I’d really like to see this after a little more time has been taken to tweak the use of gradients and style.