Text/Image Essay

Garren New York is a top of the line hair salon that caters to their celebrity clients and high class New Yorkers. Their website portrays their professional image through the varied aspects that follow.

Text

Nielsen (1997) suggest that it is rare for anyone to read a web page word for word so it is crucial to have scannable text throughout the entire page. The Garren New York website has made it easy for their viewers by keeping the amount of text to a minimum. There are only twelve words on the entire homepage and six of them are the name of the salon; which is repeated twice. This makes it simpler to navigate around the site and find what is needed immediately rather then searching through hundreds of words. It gives a decorative look which Wysocki (2004) explains the decorative category as short words or phrases that are meant to be read quickly and attract attention. The Garren New York website does this very well.

“When a letter or word or sentence or paragraph is placed on a page or screen, it is given a particular lettershape, style, size, and overall shape” (Wysocki 2004, p.127). The Garren New York website uses four different sizes of text with a regular style typeface. They use all capitol letters which create a strong and prominent feeling. They also use the Times New Roman font. Roman typefaces “give their writing classical weight” (Wysocki 2004, p.128). Since the website is for a famous hair salon in New York, they want to come off with that classic appeal so using Times New Roman is a good choice. The font has “lines called serifs which are at the end of the main strokes which are supposed to look like the finishing touches a stone carver would give to a letter to clean its edges” (Wysocki 2004, p.128). This parallels the hair cuts being done by Garren New York, which are meant to have clean edges as well.

Background

The Garren New York Website had an entire photograph of their salon as the background of the screen. “Photographs are often used to bring a sense of immediacy and reality to a layout” (Wysock 2004, p.132). It makes you feel almost as it you could walk right into the website for your hair appointment.

The colors in the background are quite neutral and dull. “Websites that want to give the appearance of being serious tend to use muted colors and a limited number” (Wysocki 2004, p.132). Since the website is for a very high-class salon, they need to come off as very serious and professional. The colors used work well together to create a calming affect. Zambonini (2009) says that the colors presented in a website need to be harmonious to make it work, and Garren New York’s website definitely makes this work.

Visual Transition

When you first click on the link to the website, the Garren New York logo appears on a black background, but then turns into the logo that is printed on the salon door and the homepage appears. The visual transition into the website “makes it look as though what is on one screen morphs slowly into what is on the other, implying a relation of similarity between the screens” (Wysocki 2004, p.137).

Links

The website uses “different typefaces and other graphic elements to create a variable surface that can look playful or create a sense of geometric order.” (Wysocki 2003, p.131). The six links that are used look like they are on top of a white glass table, which lays across the bottom of the screen, because there is a shadowing effect under the text. This gives the more realistic effect and when you scroll over the links, it looks like you are picking something up off of the table, which is a playful aspect. It correlates with the salon very well because the hairdressers pick up their supplies off of a table to transition your hair from one look to another, which is the same as you picking up the links to transition from one webpage to the other.

The inks travel up in space when scrolled over “to differentiate what is clickable” (Wysocki 2004, p.131). They also become highlighted in a muted gold color as another way to signal the ability to click on it. 

Composition

Zambonini (2009) suggest that a professional looking website has to have the majority of the weight in the center of the page to keep its balance. The Garren New York logo is the biggest feature on the webpage and is smack dab in the center of the screen. This not only draws attention to the most important subject but also does a wonderful job of balancing out the other features on the page. Since there are only a few aspects going on in the webpage, a simple composition is created. Simplicity is shown by an “uncluttered layout and minimal features” (Csikszentmihalyi, 2009).

The Garren New York website serves the purpose of a high-class hair salon and does a great job at showing their professionalism through its text, background, visual transition, links and composition.  Their soon to be clients are sure to get a good feeling about their salon through their website and simply book an appointment by using the contact information easily found with the click of the mouse.

Reference List

Csikszentmihalyi ,M (2009). Flow in web design. Retrieved October 22, 2009, from http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/2/ 

Neilsen J. (1997). How users read on the web. Retrieved October 22, 2009, from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html

Wysocki, A. (2004). The multiple media of texts: how onscreen and paper texts incorporate words, images, and other media. C. Bazerman & P.A. Prior (Eds.), What writing does and how it does it: an introduction to analyzing texts and textual practices (pp.123-163). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Zambonini, D. (2009). Analyzing the design of websites. Retrieved October 22, 2009, from http://www.boxuk.com/blog/analyzing-the-design-of-websites