cafefanny.com

Not to free associate--well, who am I kidding: I am free associating. So after the bear naked, I googled other cool granola sites to see if anything interesting came up. Not only was this site one of the few that came out toward the top, it also had this weird name that rhymes (does it?) Anyway before I start, I wanted to point out MY FAVORITE part about this site. It's most an introduction website for a cafe that actually has a shop in Berkeley, CA. Not only do coffee shops usually not have a cute little website for themselves, but it's often impossibly hard to find their HOURS (which is possibly the most important piece of information other than how delicious their coffee is). They have it NICE and CLEAR on the homepage.
Nice.

navigation. There is only one navigation on the home page (and throughout) and that is the main navigation. Once you click on the link, it changes (the font color changes to orange from beige and the box also comes (secondary navigation) attached to the link. The link also has the box surround it.
The hierachy comes through mostly because of the simplicity. The top navigation, which stays constant in all of their pages, is clearly the most important navigation (well the logo is the bigger, but it IS the logo). The secondary navigation (the links of the secondary navigation changes to match the orange of the top navigation when clicked on) whose color matches the clicked on link) is of a smaller size font, but the small caps make for a nice transition from all small case used for the top navigation. The transition is thoughtful without being slick and I think it comes their cafe vibe pretty well (although of course, I have never been there). And because of the simplicity of the website, the place within the site is pretty clear to tell. You can also go back to the home page any time you want by clicking on "home."

architecture. It doesn't appear to have a deep structure. There are total of about 20 pages, and they are not acessible at first (you do have to clikc on each main navigation link to access that secondary navigation for that category), so in a sense, they are also not flat (structurally).

content/typography. Other than the ones I talked about already, the site keeps a pretty simple css style, where they utilize headlines (bold, bigger font), paragraphs (same color as the headline), links (a little darker yellow than the paragraph/headline). So in a sense, color, font weight, font size were all used to organize the page. And the links are very straightforward; when I clikc on menu, I know I am getting the full menu avaiable at the cafe and that is precisely what I get.

grid/structure. Grid, as mentioned before is pretty consistent where the top navigation has a little secondary navigation box attached to the bottom of it, and the focus is given ot the pictures dedicated for each page and the body text (there is nothing special about the tests but because you clicking to get the information, your eye does seek out the information in the text).

iconography/imagery. Although there is no icon/symbols used anywhere on the site, I do like the cleanliness that comes from the lack of those, and I probably wouln't change it. The photos that changes for every page is nice. I don't think more pictures will be necessary.

color palette. Purple, maroon, red, yellow/beige are basically all the colors. Although I don't know why these are chosen (could be their decor color), these colors speak to each other and work well together. As mentioned before, orange-beige helps with segregating texts, and so do weights/font size.

site focus. As mentioned before the point of the site is introduced the cafe. They do sell some stuff on the side, but they do not appear to be the main point (they do too little marketing to sell the items for someone who has never had their products previously). There's no search button (seems it would be excessive), and there is nothing really confusing about the site. I really wish I was in Berkeley to go to this cafe.