Author: Chloe
Website: thetextileanalysis.com

I will preface this peer review with a disclaimer: I have been checking in on updates of the site for the week before writing this review. It has been interesting to see the pages evolve from their template towards the vision Chloe has, and to see a consistent theme evolve. Seeing photos and details disappear while the site layout was being updated, then reappear with a new organized look, along with more user-friendly navigation and information is cool.

Chloe's site, THETEXTILEANALYSIS, is a clean and sleek page geared towards her inspiration and views on fashion and modern textile design from a perspective of expression. Her choice of clean leading lines and black & white aesthetic both make the page simple to follow and help the audience focus on the content she will be fostering. From a design perspective, there is a clear hierarchy in font size and weight that is mostly consistent across pages as seen in Fig. 1. I like the use of a monospace font for body-text to complement this hierarchy. There is no question that the text is easy to read and follow. Beginning to see images appear across the site adds to the theme and makes what could be a bland page come alive despite the simple design. these elements depict a focused vision of the self Chloe is articulating online. I love the aesthetic choice of monochrome images--some of which having film grain--along with monospace captions on the home page of Fig. 2. This is a nice touch that adds a personal feel to the site and feels curated for your audience. In the days just before submission I noticed more creative elements appear combining repetition of text with staggered images which looks great. There should be some caution here as the effect gets changed at different screen sizes (ie. Not wide enough for a widescreen display, and on mobile you have to scroll for a long time before you see more content.)

There is a conscious choice to not capitalize possessive 'i's or the first character of every sentence. This can be a nice style so long as it is made consistent through the site (which Chloe is achieving). The template used gives large margins for the body of the page which are about 1.5 times as large as for the header and footer, again just a statement, nothing inherently positive or negative. I feel the use of all words capitalized in the home page splash text throws this off a bit. I would like to see where the page goes with inconsistent footer use; there are three current variations. The home page uses a wider footer, while the blog page uses a narrow footer and the mini assignments and about drop the footer altogether. I believe this is an artifact from the template and has begun to consolidate. On some pages the footer is white text overlaid on a black and white image, this can be hard to read or at least inaccessible. I would suggest sticking with black or overlaying 50%-opacity black or white on top of the image/below the text to help separate and make it legible.

The blogs are laid out nicely into columns--shown in Fig. 2(c)--that let the audience see what is offered at a glance. Depending on the desired goal for audience interaction, it could be nice to have a call to action button (like "read more") that then takes the audience to the full blog post, offering more insights and media about the topics being addressed. Same goes for the assignments.

I am excited to see where this one goes. The site has a lot of potential and the care taken to curate a theme for their audience towards exploring their self through fashion identity is clear! Seeing more of the personal touch that has been appearing that last few days is a great sign of things to come, some aspects that were there a week ago such as a photo of the self could further build a connection between audience and the author, however I think this will come with time anyways. Great work!