Rotten Tomatoes
Website
Redesign
Topic: Web Design
Medium: Figma
Rotten Tomatoes Website Redesign is a redesign project of a pre-existing brand’s website. Being an avid film enthusiast, I chose Rotten Tomatoes.
For this project, I considered what are crucial aspects of the site’s identity and which elements cause too much visual clutter in the original website layout.
How Rotten Tomatoes site can be polished and refined while keeping the redesigned version recognizable was the main challenge of this work.
Issues of the Original Site Design
Screen captures from the current Rotten Tomatoes website
The initial issue I found from Rotten Tomatoes‘ website was the amount of visual clutter in its header.
The busy header section full of different categories fealt like an unnecessary amount of information.
Another problem that was notable was the use of too many different colors being used for the brand image.
The site was having not only red and white, but also green and yellow being used in its several icons.
Additionally, it seemed possible to have a more direct visual method to show whether a movie is “Fresh” or “Rotten” rather than just using numbers and an icon.
Overall, these factors were making the website design feel less polished and orderly.
The Redesign
After looking into the site’s current design and its issues I find, the direction for the redesign was clear. To give consistency and clearance in its visual language, I believed that the website can decrease the amount of information in the header, while also limiing its identity colors in black (representing the “Rotten” of Rotten Tomatoes), red (for “Tomatoes”), and white.
For the layout of the main page and trending page, I intended it to be more direct and simplified for the users to have an easier time of navigating the site.
Overall, I limited the amount of information that goes into the header section and used black, red, and white in the website’s design elements. By clearing the visual clutter of the original design, the redesign was able to look more refined and coherent. Having only three colors allowed red to be used as a highlight color and give more visual importance.
The movie rating page was also redesigned to give a more direct visual of how the movie is rated. The bar underneath the banner and the tomato icon is meant to be more red if the movie is “fresh” and black if the movie is “rotten.” It is a use of what the two colors are meant to represent.
Website Mockups
The website redesign project was an eye-opener on figuring what elements a website design needs and what aspects are necessary to make it well-refined.
Simplification and visual clearance are the crucial ingredients for a polished web design.