numero tres: Apliiq

Apliiq

This website is my sister’s roommate’s site for her company that customizes hoodies, t-shirts, shoes, and ear rings. Their mission is to make clothing fun, by adding cute patches of textiles and fabrics. Therefore, their site tries to be fun and interactive with colorful pictures and animated faces. The site starts with a splash page that announces their launch on January 2, 2009. I think it’s a good announcement to place on the splash page. My only problem with it is the typography is a little hard to read due to the pattern design chosen for the back ground. The white type gets a little washed out from the intricate pattern.

Splash page

Once in the site there is only one navigation system. The labels are storeshop, looks, blogger, textiles, about, projects, and contact. The label that might seem a bit confusing is looks. It takes you to a page of thumbnails of people wearing the Apliiq clothing. I like the use of this page since it adds an element of uniqueness to the clothing and the colorful fun images makes the user want to purchase their products, which is the goal.

Looks page

After you click on a link it either goes to a new page or opens a new window. However the primary navigation disappears. Each page is unique in layout and design the only way to get from the storeshop page to the looks page would be to go back to the original home page. Sometimes it might be confusing knowing where you are in the site. The pages don’t have headings and use the content and pictures to indicate what page you are on. If found this to not really be a problem because the content clearly lets you know where you are. Having to go back to the home page to get to another primary nav link was somewhat burdensome and inefficient but it was a sacrifice they made for the look of the pages. However the pages have an apliiq logo that will always take you back the homepage.

The site has many pages, but not that deep of architecture. Only the storeshop link goes past a second level. The products link goes fairly deep depending on what further links you select. The architecture of the site is not flat; the primary navigation actually disappears once you get past the first level, so you must go back to the home page to access different pages. However it’s not necessarily a bad thing because the groups make logical sense and makes the website more organized and structured.

There does seem to have a hierarchy of typography on some pages, but the only designation is by size and weight, the font and color are all the same. On those pages, the hierarchy is not clear and does seem a bit confusing. I would improve it by maybe adding different colors and changing up the font, using some sans serifs. The labels of the navigation are clear and accurate. For example, clicking on “textiles” gives you information on the textiles used in the clothing.

Textiles page

The structure of the pages differs from page to page. This is one reason why they chose to have the primary nav disappear after reaching the second level, so that the pages could be different and unique, just like their different products. The only thing consistent is the logo in the top left corner, and the background. The focal point of most pages is definitely the lively photos of models wearing their products. The animated models and colorful apparel captures the attention of viewer and does a great job advertising the clothing.



As I have been saying, the photos make up the site. I think it’s a good amount of photos, there are plenty of them, yet they do not overwhelm the viewer. The imagery is all photos; there are not any symbols or icons.

Storeshop page

The aside from the photos, since they are very colorful, the color palette of the rest of the site is made up of black, grey, white, and red. On the home page, the colors are used to designate the primary navigation, but other than that the photos themselves separate the content. The colors were chosen based on the logo which is black, red, grey and white. Considering their use of colorful textiles and shirts to express clothing as fun, I would have expected a more colorful palette than just the red, but it also doesn’t distract from the content which is the focal point.

Home page

The objective of this site is obviously to advertise and sell their clothing products. There is not a search option for a specific clothing product, just a gallery of options. My favorite feature is definitely the customizable option for hoodies and t-shirts. In a very elegant way, they combine three levels customization, in three concise tabs to make it simple and still fun.

Customize hoodie page

The lack of primary navigation past the first level was rather confusing for me. I did not like having to go back to the home page to get to another part of the site. I would suggest keeping the primary nav at least somewhere on every page, even if it’s small and subtle. Overall though, I like the look and feel of the site. They definitely accomplish their goal of making a fun website to compliment their fun clothing line.