Vogue.com

Shaking it UP!

Hello All, I's shaking it up this week and am going to talk about Vogue magazine other than the usual graphic design website,

Enjoy!

Vogue is a fashion magazine that features collections, parties, cultures and videos all about the latest fashion. The actual magazine is pretty think in real life so that makes it appropriate that the website has a lot of information and pictures also.

On the home page of vogue.com lies a navigation system that is under a main picture/graphic that you can flip through. The Navigation bar is very legible having appropriate amounts of space between each work and differentiation between the primary links within the bar and the secondary one (s). When navigating through the website the navigation bar stays the same and actually moves along as you scroll down the webpage’s. Once you click on one of the navigation links the link does not change so you won’t know what webpage’s you have visited already. The site is very busy because there are a lot pictures everywhere but most of the time it’s not difficult to know where you are since you can access the navigation bar at all times.

This site seems to have a very deep architecture within it, as stated before Vogue’s magazine is pretty thick itself so it makes sense that its magazine has deep architecture with many webpage’s exploring and covering fashion topics and discussions. There are a lot of pages and links within those pages that takes you to a different webpage within the site or an external website that is affiliated with Vogue.  The deep architecture is also because the fashion topics that they cover are very broad and complex so the information that it conveys in very broad.

The type that is chosen for the website is Georgia for its body text, but because Vogue covers other brands and companies, there are a lot of brand names and its typographical styles. The typographical styles throughout this site are very broad and various so determining the hierarchy between in the text is very difficult.  There are some techniques are used to make the headlines more prominent like its bigger size and centered alignment but it still gets a little confusing nonetheless.

There is a grid structure that is followed by the webpage’s and for each webpage the same grid structure is followed. to a certain extent, with the main text/topic column in the middle and on the right and left column lie advertisement linking you internally and externally. The sections usually stay the same with the placement of advertisement, contact and social network information at the bottom. The focal point of the webpage’s, other than the homepage, is the logo and navigation bar underneath with the headline of the specific page.

The Vogue website has a too many pictures and graphics for my liking, I understand that it’s a fashion website and people like to see all the pictures of the latest fashion but its too much for a website. Having that many pictures is only suitable for its magazine rather than its website so it would probably be better if the didn’t overwhelm their webpage’s with photos and flash video players with makes the webpage’s longer to load at times. Also, with the advertisements that are a little too big at times and other brand logos that are incorporated with the page there is little or no description explaining its presence.

Even thought I do not favor the photos I do favor the colors of the vogue website itself which is black, white and red. There’s just a lot of colors going on with the other photos that sometimes you lose the simplicity of the original design or style. I find this site useful with its fashion trends and how they organize its topics and information. But I would rather if they use less flash because I can tell that a below average or even an average computer would have trouble processing all the information used for its website.