Site Critique: Hathor Dance Collective

http://www.hathordancecollective.com/
http://www.agencynet.com/

Since Dave brought up Rebecca Clayton in class, I figured I would use her site for my critique. Well, there are actually a couple of reasons why, I guess. First I have to get on a soap box and almost pontificate the god-awful business sense and web professionalism of belly dancers. They SUCK. I know nobody cares about this except other belly dancers who actually work in a technical field and have to navigate their comic sans brochures of poorly Photoshopped direction-switching gifs and general confusion, but they are a particular breed.  Belly dancing is very popular and is very web-dependent to spread information about events and classes and registration for either. Rebecca's is a beautiful site, very professional, and is the Queen Mary in a sea of bad belly dance sites. Plus, I've seen her work progress nicely from the beginning of her graphic design days and I like to look at her stuff and think "...One day..."

Enough rant. I feel this site is very successful because of it's killer aesthetic, easy navigation, consistent use of space and color and pattern, and just enough information. When you first pull up the site, you're greeted with a beautiful graphic of the girls that run the school. Excellent photography captured really nice images of them actually performing dance moves rather that just showing them doing hokey still poses. The balance of warm and cool colors in the photography combined with the cool-colored graphics that compose the rest of the page makes this centerpiece graphic seem really warm and inviting. When you scroll down, the information supplied underneath is minimal-but just enough for the 90% of the people who will look at it for whatever reason. The with the use of transparent PNGs for the text dividers, the content scrolls over what looks like literally a stylish and modern Victorian inspired wall (fixed and masked with lots of black to give it depth) and complements her use of negative space with the content, making the content look even lighter (bulk wise) and more readable, like all of the content is on a thing glass window in the middle of the room.

If you have a smaller monitor and don't see the content underneath the centerpiece, there is a simple top bar navigation that points you directly where you want to go. There are no sub-menus and only the important and relevant information is top navigation. She didn't put a button for every bit of information that is provided in the site, which is nice. If you cared to look further into different aspects of the school, then you would find extra sort of "bonus" content. This top navigation remains in place no matter which page you are on, which keeps the viewer mentally grounded as they explore the site. She uses a common but effective inverted appearance of the button when you hover, and the active page has a light cast shadow under the text with no hover action. The font is consistent and is wide and round and clean. It comes across both casual and friendly, but also very professional.

The whole feel of this website can be summed up in an analogy I think of when I look at it. Other sites, particularly of this genre, are like a college dorm room. Whether the tenant is neat or a slob, there's something that seems so temporary and non-cohesive about the space. Rebecca's site is like walking into a nice, established homeowner's house. The decor matches the personality of the owners--in this case, the dance school-- and there's been actual money invested in it, even the yard is kempt, and the whole environment is very established and solid.

For my project I was thinking about making a website about the circus, particularly the 1870-1950 era of traveling vagabonds and freak shows and crazy acrobats.