The website I chose was Asos, an online fashion store. The website design relies on simplicity and a black/white color scheme, and incorporates gestalt principles.
Figure and ground: Asos uses simple black text, which stands out against the white background. Occasionally, white text is placed against a colored background, such as red or white, to make the text pop.
Proximity and alignment: A clean, round sans-serif font is used throughout the website. The typeface is the same as that of the Asos wordmark. All of the text is aligned to the left. Almost all of the type is black against a white background.
Continuation: Two drop down menus (“women” and “men”) display different types of clothing that people can shop for. Also, news is placed in a sidebar down the right side of the home page, and also in a horizontal box along the bottom of the page. The viewer of the website can scroll down to access more content.
Visual hierarchy: The headlines are bolded and capitalized, which shows dominance over the body text, which uses a lighter weight and a mix of caps/lower case letters. Although most of the website uses black text over a white background, important content uses white text over a red or colored background. Also, key information is much larger on the page.
I really like the simplicity of this web design. The red that is used around the website makes the fonts and links pop against the white background. I also really enjoy the typeface. It’s simple, yet fits perfectly with fashion because it adds some character. As for visual hierarchy, the bolded words make them stand out on the page, as well as the white font color against the red background. The pictures on the web page that signify different links also adds to visual hierarchy.
I would have to agree in that the simplicity of the website is definitely something that attracts the eye; it conveys the message of the simplistic style that the fashion website offers, and also makes it easy for the viewer’s eye to go down the page. Not to mention, the white space makes the black, bolded text stand out more along with the red image at the top.