“Looking Up”

 

I took this picture on a beautiful March Saturday night on the Georgetown waterfront. As I walked back to my car from dinner with a friend, I looked up to see a beautiful sunset as the sun slipped behind the clouds. The contrast of the clouds and the water really made the sun stand up, despite it being a fairly cloudy night, and the picture really turned out well. It’s always interesting to look up to the sky at night and see the change from day to night.

 

 

This picture was taken from the catwalk high above Comcast Center before a big ACC game. If you look up from the court, you don’t notice much about the top of Comcast Center–you can see the steel beams, and occasionally can catch a glimpse of stairs or what could be a person in the distance. But once you get up on the catwalk and look down at the court you can see everything. People in every section, the game, the benches. It’s an interesting view and one that proves that you can’t always see everything with a quick glance up.

Unity, Hierarchy, Contrast, Consistency

For the most part, the Huffington Post utilizes unity fairly well. Story blurbs and previews are, for the most part, organized on the pages in a grid format with consistent colors, font styles and font sizes. The grid can appear a little cluttered and disorganized, but the grid format does provide organization. On each of the main pages (home, Politics, Business, Entertainment, Tech, Media, WorldPost, Healthy Living, and Comedy) there is also a large featured photo with a short introduction to the story underneath preceding the grids. This part of the page can appear a little plain to the eye, with normally just a big headline, large photo and a short blurb above or underneath that links to the story. However, after looking closely into what these highlighted stories are on each page, it’s clear that the Huffington Post uses this area to really grab the readers attention. Each of the sections of the site look the same, and the pages form a “coherent whole.”

The Huffington Post is a site that utilizes contrast especially well. There is a variance of how the smaller stories are arranged on the grid and whether they are highlighted by photos relating to the story or a quick introduction and picture of the columnist/writer. On the Entertainment page, for example, the left-hand column of the page has a header that says “Featured Blog Posts” to distinguish from the news stories in the other columns to the right. The reader can clearly see the difference in the stories as they scroll.

Hierarchy is another aspect that the Huffington Post really succeeds at. As I mentioned previously, each of the pages features a large photo at the top with a headline and link to a story. These stories are clearly highlighted as the most important within that section. The font is typically larger, bolder and sometimes even shown in bright colors like red to really draw the readers attention to them. As a reader, I’m more likely to click on one of these top stories because it appears like the site is really stressing its importance.

                     An example of one of the highlighted main photos.

Each of The Huffington Post’s pages is designed in the same format. The consistency used in all of the design elements makes it clear even as you navigate away from the front page what website you are on. While the top banner on each of the pages reads differently depending on the subject of the article, it always still says at least “HuffPost.” The colors also depend on the subject, however the overall look and design remains exactly the same. It is a unique look and one that has helped The Huffington Post form its identity as a site.

Two different pages, yet the exact same design.