Case Study 1

http://www.designbyhumans.com

On the top right-hand corner of the site, there are five main navigation links with icons (accompanied by the name of the links) corresponding to them. Below is a bar with subordinate links which, upon clicking, changes the background color of the button to remind people what page they are looking at. The primary links do not alter in their appearance, but informs visitors by the placement of the main link icon on the leftmost side of the bar, followed by the secondary links.
Due to the fact that these links never disappear mysteriously at some point, you will always know where you are. The logic of the website is easy to understand, and going back to the home page is only a click away. The home page is always accessible by clicking on the DESIGNBYHUMANS title, located on the top left-hand corner.
There are many pages, seeing how this is a website with thousands of t-shirt designs. The hierarchy of the links, however, makes it much more easier to work your way through all of the pages. The many different levels of links are shown by using either bold or regular all-caps font.
The links on the bar are bolded if they don't have any further "sublinks." If they do, however, the font will be regular (as can be seen under the main "SHOP" link), and when clicked on, will give you several more options to narrow down your search.
There is consistency within the website, and the only characteristic that changes is the navigation links. The focal point is almost always the artwork because it contrasts greatly from the gray and gradiented background, which is great since the visitors should be paying more attention to the t-shirt designs.
This website does a great job at targeting the right people through its sleek and youthful design. The website is dominated by gradients of gray, while the icons are solid colors of blue, pink, green, yellow, and brown. Gray was most likely chosen to neutralize all the colorful graphic tees that were to be submitted by people. This aligns well with the objective of the website - to put on display graphic t-shirt designs created by people like you and me. Searching for tees or info on how to submit your own work is very easy and straightforward. Narrowing down the t-shirts displayed on the page may be a bit confusing at first, since there is no actual search tool, but when you realize the buttons on the bar, it deems to be pretty useful. The drop-down style of these buttons also make it easy for people to narrow down their selection.
They could perhaps improve on the site by making it clear before clicking on the t-shirt whether there is also a version of it for the opposite gender. Currently, it is required that you click on the t-shirt in order to find this out. This could be done by displaying the availability upon mouse-over, very much the same way how websites selling apparel and accessories allow you a "quick view" of the item.
Another aspect of the website that bothered me was that the news section was unnecessarily long. This could have been made shorter by including excerpts of the news, and having a "more..." link for each of them, which would allow people to scroll less and continue to read on a particular article only if need be.