Peer Review One: Marley Schneider

Collections I Keep Word Map Created by Marley Schneider, 2020

The individual whose Word Map I have chosen to review is Marley Schneider. Marley effectively implements clear hierarchy within her composition through scale, color, transparency, and physical placement. For example, I can tell what the main categories of her collections are because of their scale and color. Similarly, Marley's name exudes hierarchical qualities for its color that contrasts with the other categories, as well as its centered placement.

Marley's Word Map showcases an effective differentiation in scale, color, and placement to show hierarchy within her collections. I appreciate the fact that she highlighted some of her most important or meaningful collections in green, which really brings the viewer's attention to those items. The area that could use a little more attention to would be spacing. Some subcategories are really close to their respective categories, while others are quite far away. This makes it hard for the viewer to associate which items belong to which categories, ultimately making the Word Map hard to follow in some areas.

There is an overall a sense of balance within Marley's Word Map, however, I think she could have arranged her music collections in the top left corner of her map in a way that better complimented the collections in the lower left, but other than that, I think she did a great job of equally dispersing her collections throughout the composition. Marley's Word Map exudes asymmetrical qualities within an otherwise symmetrical layout. Her main collection categories create a symmetrical, border-like frame around the content in the center of the design. The collections within the border are quite asymmetrically positioned and arranged.

Marley's Word Map does seem like a self-portrait. Just by reading through her collections, I get a sense of who she is as a person and what values and interests she has. Furthermore, through the use of hierarchical techniques and other design principles, I can understand which collections are her most treasured and which ones play the most important roles in shaping who she is as an individual.

Throughout her online portfolio, Marley uses effective design principles and strategies to successfully display the content within both her blog section and website overall. Marley's portfolio is arranged in a way that consistently uses the design principle, plane. From the color-blocked sections on her homepage, to the paragraphs of text used to describe her work in her blog, plane has been implemented throughout Marley's portfolio as an organizational strategy to guide the viewer from one section to the next. Marley also successfully implements the subtle use of color to bring importance to certain aspects of her website without being overwhelming.

Check out Marley's original blog post here!