UWIC DFIM - Nick Gerrard

Sequence Media – Website

Sequence Media – Cardiff

The Sequence website has been primarily designed to attract potential clients to contact the company to produce work for them. The secondary aim is to provide a feel for the company for people who aren’t looking to commission work but want to find out more about the organisation, prospective employees for example. Its visual tone is both warm and inviting, with clarity of communication obviously being an important issue for the designers. The colours are vibrant and modern and it makes the site seem instantly visually stimulating. The obvious skill has been to create such a colourful site that doesn’t look at all garish or tacky. The content is somewhat unusually framed in the centre of the page taking up a little less than half the available space against a pink and grey background. This works really well in the context, allowing you to focus on the relevant information and take in the whole of each page at a glance. There is a universal navigation system at the top right of the page which means that once you’ve have accessed a few options you won’t have to return to the home page and branch out again which, for a relatively small site means it’d be near impossible to get lost.

The grey, sans serif font is understated and stylish with great legibility while the pink headers add a splash of colour and visual interest. Both the text and colour scheme are consistent throughout and the pictures always appear very glossy and colourful even though they don’t always relate directly to the content on each page. The site designers aren’t trying to assault the user’s senses with a bag of flashy tricks; it’s just very professional, very clear and displays a certain confidence in approach that I imagine would be very pleasing to the target audience. The only thing that moves on the site is a banner with two headlines and two high quality images advertising the fact that the company is to work on ‘Doctor Who’ which slides from side to side within its frame when you hold the mouse over it. This is a classy and well implemented piece of functionality as it allows the user to enjoy some interactivity but in an appropriate way which is not to the detriment of the core content. The home page is concise and neat; you don’t need to scroll down to see anything and everything you’d want to find on a home page is present and clear to find. The News section with its ‘NEW!’ tags next to the most recent items gives the impression of a constantly updated and always relevant website that is at the heart of the company’s self promotion strategy.

The only minor problems I had with this site were the coloured blocks on the home page by the Doctor Who banner and down at the bottom right hand side. These look as if they might be some form of buttons but they turn out to be nothing more than window dressing. Also, in the portfolio section the Featured Projects are always visually dominant so that when you click to look at work from a particular industry from the right hand text menu it’s not particularly clear whether it’s brought a new menu up. Otherwise this site is an excellent example of how sound design principles and a confident use of colour can create a site that is really clear in it’s meaning and satisfying to use. It’s a lesson to us as designers that we don’t have to wow someone in order to impress them.

posted by nick_gerrard @ 11:58 AM