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The Art Of Critiquing
7:18The Art of critiquing takes some practice to master. In this video we will go over what a critique is and how to implement it in your future designs.
Now that we understand the design elements
and principles.
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Let's put them to work by doing a
critique.
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A critique simply means a method to
analyze something.
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If I were to show you a design and say, do
you think this design is effective?
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A million different thoughts will race
through your
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head and you might not know where to
start.
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This is why we have a critique system for
analyzing designs.
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We use the design elements and principles
we just learned to achieve this process.
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I have compiled a critiquing checklist for
you in the project downloads.
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This list is very similar to what an
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artist might use when critiquing fine art
pieces.
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However, I altered a couple of things so
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we can use it for critiquing designs as
well.
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I will be critiquing a website located at
playgroundinc.com
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as an example to walk through their
critiquing process.
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But first, let's take a look at our
critiquing checklist.
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Our critiquing checklist is broken down
into four sections.
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Description, analysis, interpretation and
judgment.
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Now as we look at this site
playgroundinc.com
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let's take a look at the first section,
description.
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Now for the description we simply want to
state who created the
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composition, or in this case the website,
and who is it for.
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Playground Ink is a digital creative
agency, which we
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can clearly see when we land on the home
page.
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And this site is geared for their clients
or for people who
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don't understand who the company is and
what kind of work they do.
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So for the description, you simply want to
state who
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created it, what's it for, and we can be
specific.
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So in this case it's a web application and
it's scalable.
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It goes all the way down to mobile.
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And depending on the design you're looking
at, this
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can be very literal or it can be very
figurative.
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So that's the description section.
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Very short brief and basically just
explaining
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what we're looking at and who created it.
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Now the next section the analysis, we
simply wanna use our design
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elements in principles that we just
learned and apply them to this critique.
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Now as we scroll through the home page,
you can see we have very bold headlines,
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with text underneath, and nice animated
graphics as we go down the page.
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So I would say that his design is very
minimal, and animated.
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So for the style, I would categorize this
as a minimal website.
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Now simply go through our checklist of
elements first.
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So we have line, shape, form, space,
color, value, and texture.
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And so on.
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So, when we look at this site, we can
clearly
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see that they have used a grid as
everything's lined up.
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And they've used a lot of white space to
focus in either
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on the headline or the body text, as well
as the illustrations.
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The illustrations are very minimal.
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And they're highly interactive when we
hover over them.
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So right there, I've already talked about
space.
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I've talked about line, talked about form.
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There doesn't seem to be much texture.
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So if you've covered at least four of the
elements, you're doing pretty well.
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So, you'll also notice that the colors are
very consistent throughout.
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They have this monochromatic blues that
they are using and almost gray.
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And they're bright yellow which you can
see in their logo on the top left.
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As well as in illustrations.
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So they're using unity with their colors.
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And they're using that yellow as a call to
action.
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They're using emphasis on the yellow.
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And that brings us into our principles of
design.
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So, we've talked about contrast, of the
contrasting of the colors.
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We've talked about the movement and the
animations,
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the unity amongst the colors, and emphasis
as well.
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So in the analysis section, all we're
really doing is
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stating how they've used the elements and
principles of design.
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Whether they're effective or not, we're
simply stating
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the ones that stand out to us the most.
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Our third section is interpretation.
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All we want to do here is state the
intention of the
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composition, and how we feel they were
influenced in creating this design.
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And why do we feel that way?
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So looking at our example, I feel the
intent of this website was to
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simply show off their work, tell a little
bit about the company, and their process.
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As you can see in the work section,
they've comprised
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a lot of their work that they've done in
the past.
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And again they're using a lot of space.
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It's very easy to read as all of the
content is grouped together.
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Down here we can see the team.
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So the intent for this is to simply show
off
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their work and get to know them as a
company.
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I feel that they were influenced by
typography and
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a minimal approach using a lot of white
space.
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Now the fourth section is judgement this
is where we
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can put our personal feelings and opinions
into the piece.
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So did they accomplish what they were
intended to do and why?
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I personally feel they did a great job
showing off their
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work and allowing us to get to know them
and their process.
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Our next question is what do we like about
the work?
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Well I stated that before I, I feel
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they've done a great job using color,
shape,
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using a grid making sure everything's
lined up,
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grouping the content together so it's
easily digested.
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Using that bright color of call to action.
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Notice how we went to the Work page and
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the logo changed green and so did the
Favicon.
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Although it's still within the same color
palette throughout the whole site.
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If we go to Company, it's red.
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And the Journal is a light blue.
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So I feel they've done a great job with
this site.
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Also they've done some cutting edge stuff
as well.
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If you remember the animations on the Home
page.
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This is all done through JavaScript, which
is really cool.
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They're probably one of the first
companies
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to really incorporate this technology into
their site.
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And then next what do I not like about the
work?
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I feel the only thing I could say that I
don't like about it, is when
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we go to Journal and Work, there's no
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thumbnails to the actual work that they've
done.
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It'd be nice to see a thumbnail of you
know.
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The Canada Goose, just so we can get an
idea of what type of work it was.
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It simply just says View Case Study, so
perhaps, you know, maybe
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there's a thumbnail of the site on there,
so we can view it.
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And the same goes for Journal, it'd be
great if
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there were some sort of visual indicator
of what it's about.
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But besides that, that's all I changed.
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I feel that this site is a well-designed
site,
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and they successfully completed what they
intended to do.
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So that's how we would use the critique
checklist when viewing a design.
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Now, we can use this for anything such as
a mobile game.
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Any type of design that you create, simply
use this check list to go
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through to see if the design is effective
or ineffective and what can be changed.
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The process of critiquing can be applied
to any design.
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This is just one more skill you can add to
your future design process.
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Before moving on to the next stage, let's
take a quick quiz.
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