'Blanka is both an online gallery and permanent visual archive devoted to celebrating the very best in creative communication and print on an international stage. We are an open and enthusiastic co-operative of people from all creative disciplines expressing themselves through exceptional, innovative and inspiring printed items. Blanka has been created to act as a permanent archive and virtual gallery space to display art and design, photography and print. We are constantly growing and evolving to showcase the talents of our contributors to deliver the best recent work, unearth some classics from our past and also bring you new, inspirational pieces hot off the press.'
The overall strengths of the website is the ease of facilitating your way around the site. Tabs are clearly labeled to allow the user to navigate around the site. There is a small summerative sentence that allows the user to gain a quick contextual understanding of who the company is and what they are about. The website enables designers to sell their work alongside other successful designers in the same field.
The homepage reflects their competence as a design company using a limited colour palette of cyan grey and white. The lack of design 'fuss' within the sight allows the designers work to speak for itself, which shows a sort of confidence with the designers contained within the sight.
Interactive thumbnails allows the user to click on images of interest that then easily navigated them to a more detailed description of the work and the price and the opportunity to purchase the item.
However the fact that the text is all in capital letters makes the bulks of text less readable. The tone of the grey chosen within the text in the site is a little pale. Perhaps they text could be larger and the vast amount of cyan 'space' could be reduced. The site does contain web pages of the designers that are featured in the site, however the designers web pages are not links which hinders the ease to navigate to a certain designers page.
The sight would benefit with more details as to how they set up the company and maybe even a list of the creatives who put it together, ultimately this would gain them more exposure. Another opportunity for the site could be to provide more contacts details as only a email is provided which is minimal and does not provide consumers to have personal contact. A phone number or address may have been useful. Some of the photography of the design work is very hard to see, the sight would benefit from larger images sizes especially if the work is available to buy as small photograph sizes doesn't give the consumer a very clear view of what they are buying which could result in lower sales.
Other sites that sell design works such as Amazon could pose a threat to an in dependant website like Blanka, however Amazon does not sell such niche design and designers work like Blanka. Sites such as .... and ...... pose serious competition as they to sell diverse amounts of designers works all integrated on one website.
The second company that I will do a SWOT analysis is CHK design who are a design company based in London.
CHK's website contains very simple and direct language, their company approach is clear and concise and written clearly as context+concept+collaboration=communication. This statement clearly informs the audience that the company has no frills and don't need gimmicks to sell their design, effectively the design speaks for itself.
One can easily navigate through the well layed out website and the simple and consistent use of san serif type facilitates navigation. The company 'projects' are clearly labeled under the genre that they fit under. The sight feels "smooth" and very well thought out.
The simple interactivity is well complemented by the white background which allows the work to really take centre stage, which it should do as it is excellent.
However the website provides no further details of the projects that the company have completed. We are given no indication as to where the project was completed, who was involved, where and how it was successfully executed. This lack of information lets the website down.
The site also does not contain any interior photographs of the books that have been published, this is a little disappointing and is not allowing the website to exploit how good the work is.
A good opportunity for the company would be to provide an online shop where consumers could navigate to to products that the company have produced. Another expansion could be contact details of some of the companies that CHK have worked for.
