Design I like

There are so many modern media designs that grab my attention and it's difficult to just focus on one. However, I decided for the moment to focus on a website that grabbed my attention visually and kept me there based on the information and the substance of the website itself. I'm talking about This American Life. I'm a sucker for typography and the process of both proximity and alignment incorporated in the layout strongly stood out. The important idea here is that everything is concise, efficient and easy.

Referring to Donald Norman, visibility is apparent in the website. Hyperlinks are located at the top of the homepage where I can easily access information depending on where I choose to go. Each hyperlink is labelled and effortlessly indicates the mapping between the clicking of the mouse and the information I want to access. The composition of the layout is neatly organized and allows me to clearly comprehend the information, indicating where I should begin and end.

The specific layout shown here has the name of the website located on the left side of the screen in big, bold, text clearly grabbing my attention with this bold choice of typography. The alignment of the layout works well, having comparably larger text on either side of the page allowing me to focus on the smaller text in the middle which showcases weekly radio stories. The headers are bold and modern (using a sans serif font probably Helvetica), allowing me to easily find new entries as well as archival footage that I may have missed in the previous weeks. This website is a minimalist's dream and clearly resonates with Donald Norman's theories: the layout for This American Life defines strong instructions and strong visibility. The visibility clearly indicates the mapping between actions and actual operations and a viewer such as myself, is able to indicate distinctions within the layout and manage it effectively.