CEMP stands for The Centre for Excellence in Media Practice and “is a research and innovation centre based in the Media School at Bournemouth University.” They have very recently launched a redesign of their site and I thought I would spend some time reviewing it for you.

The first thing I noticed about the site was it’s unusual layout. The content pods are arranged in a random order (although they do conform to a 4 column grid) and give the site, in my opinion, a nice feeling of fluidity. This theme continues throughout the site as the location of the pods vary on every page.

There is also a key pod on most pages that contain the copy for that page. These pods are twice the width of the others and don’t include a white border (the other pods do.) These design choices make the bigger pods stand out much more and I constantly found myself looking at these before their smaller counterparts.

One problem I do have with the pod design however, is the ‘reflection’ that has been placed beneath them. I know this is a purely personal design opinion but the layout of the site doesn’t call for having a reflection under the pods, they just don’t look like they are sat on a reflective surface. I would suggest that a subtle drop shadow would look better.

The very subtle grey colour scheme makes any use of colour really stand out. As you navigate through the site you see that each section has been given a corresponding accent colour which has been used within the pods. I really like this contrast as it puts emphasis on the important areas.

As you dig down into the site and get to the bulk of the content the layout reverts back to what you might call a conventional style. The page is split using a traditional 3 column layout with the largest of the columns housing the copy. This is an important step because the site needs to convey its message to the readers, and making the main content easy to read is obviously a must for this. If they had decided to use the random pods structure on these lower level pages it could have been very difficult to focus the users’ attention on the copy.

Anyway, I’ll stop there and summarize by saying that I really like what the guys have done with their site and think that it looks great. The guys working for CEMP are producing a lot of very interesting work and I suggest you get yourself on the site and find out exactly what they do.

Critique Agent: "AtiKuSDesign"  -  http://www.twitter.com/atikusdesign

AtiKuSDesign is the creator and editor of the web and graphic design inspiration blog D-Lists. He lives and breathes design, spending 90% of his life online looking at a screen, finding inspiration everywhere. To add to his passion for design he is an experienced front-end and wordpress developer. Follow him on twitter or follow his complete set of online ramblings via his flavors page More posts by this author.