Website needs crit.

[deleted member]

hey all I was wondering If you could take a look at my website and give me some crits about layout and design and all that... also I didn't make it through the application process for the Design Team so any crits about what I could do better in that respect would also be appreciated. thx!

[travislayne]

hey all I was wondering If you could take a look at my website and give me some crits about layout and design and all that... also I didn't make it through the application process for the Design Team so any crits about what I could do better in that respect would also be appreciated. thx!

Its very creative! However, I have made a few notes:

The yellow text of the main navigation is partly over a white area. This is difficult to read. Perhaps a darker shade of blue, or a contrasting orange?

There are at least three fonts on the home page. I love what you are doing with the capitalized letters as a theme, but try to have the main nav font follow suit a little better (something other than military fonts )

I love your gallery! Lightbox is definately in style, and will help your users immensely. On your website section, though, make sure to open all links to other websites in another blank window. You don't want to make people leave your site against their will.

I would be cautious about putting your email on your website in plain text. Web Spyders can pick that up quickly and start a spamming train on you.

Nice awards! I would like to see them left aligned, though, so I can read them easier.

Great idea with the header icon in the top left! I might use that myself. Nevertheless, we as users are accustomed now to being able to click on the logo to get back home. I would set that as a link to the home page as well. It doesn't hurt to have two home page links.



You are on a great start! Consider those revisions to help our your users and give you more traffic!

[deleted member]

thx! Those are some great crits anybody else? I'm a graphic design major (though i'm only a freshman) and i'f my logos arn't up to par please let me know what i need to change. Also still looking for crits on the website before I rework it. Thx again travislayne.

[juluque]

Hello Rockhart, First, you art is very interesting! now the website compete a little with it, it is too bold and 3d for art. I would look for a different approach, something more simple and flat, but still clean, to help your art to shine. In the menu bar, the icons are flat on top of a 3d bar, there is a certain degree of contradiction there... the ends of the bar are too pointing and agressive, create a tension you don't need. However good work in general. Hope you don't hate me. My website Spark::Video Web - Video Productions - Web Development - 3D Renderings - Tampa, Florida

[deleted member]

Juluque - Hate you? lol those were exactly the kind of crits I was was looking for :P thanks!

Travislayne - thx again for your crtis! I finally got some free time and tweaked my website some more... still don't have flash so... :P

anyways still looking for comments and crits about my website and my logos! heres the link one more time... AndrewLockhartDesign

[deleted member]

ummm... guys? I really would love some more crit's about my website. I fixed everything (I think) that I was told was wrong or hard to read the first time.... ready for the second round.
Here's the link again...

[brian_lsf]

is it normal that the blue layout is on white background (i'm on a 1440x900 resolution)?

if you are targetting a broader audience, you should consider designing for a resolution of 1024x768, ie everything should look good and important stuff should fit in 955x600

right now everything is too big, it should be more compact
thumbnails are too big and big vertical thumbnails on many rows cause too much scrolling

Lightbox images are too big.. lightbox is used to present images on the screen so they should fit on the screen, I hate having to scroll when there's lightbox

wtf is nfs? put 'not for sale' or even better, don't put anything at all

external links should have target="_blank"

[deleted member]

brian_lsf: you sure you have that high a resolution? i tried it on 800X600 (which barely anybody has now days) and I did need to scroll a bit but any other size and the site works. I do see your point about light box... i don't like having to scroll down to but i can't figure out how to get it to go up any further...

btw your website is pretty kick ass... man I need to get flash and dreamweaver

[brian_lsf]

it's not about how much you scroll, it's about how much content you get when scrolling..

if you reduce the size of the graphics and thumbnails, you could get everything to fit on a page without scrolling

yea there's something not working well with the lightbox, it's not supposed to display that low
maybe you can try this one Lightbox++ at Codefidelity just to see if the position changes, it's basically the same thing but with improvements and flash capability

Thanks it's actually my new website, started it in december and it's not completely done yet..

[Chung Dha]

The website actually looks very boring, and also not quite a clean design. First of all the Icon you use for each sections are just not needed. Also what have a lamp got to do with galleries and an aids ribbon with your bio.

Also design an actual logo for yourself cause this is just plain text with an effect. A logo makes allot of difference and determine the style. Cause you have 2 styles going one with web2.0 for your upper txt and below are all flat designs.

And not diggin the fonts colors, its boring for a designer it need to jump out bright and say you are a designer and much like a website from web1.0 era and looks way too dated.

You should search websites of famous designers and get inspired from them. Trying to design something without knowing what are the prefered design and trend , you will never design anything good, so search for trend and sites that rank good looking site to get inspired.

[deleted member]

brian_lsf Thx for the link! I'm redoing my website now so when I get to the actual image part i'll try it out.

Chung Dha thx for the crit. while I do agree w/ a lot of what you said the changes your asking me to do are kind of impossible right now. I don't have dreamweaver or flash (although I might soon ) and that whole website was coded by hand. once I get those programs i'll figure out how to modernize it I'm thinking something like this?

[Chung Dha]

You should learn to do it the old way with HTML and CSS. Its not that hard and makes can do pretty much more with better controls.

That new one is too boring, its like website that people made back in the days internet just started. You don't need such large buttons, people are not blind. Do more with the backgrounds. BG of the menu have with other color than where the informations is. Also don't say Contact info, just contact is enough.

And your logo is to unreadable can only see ndrew saying. Rockhart is far too small to read. And never detach the A into a graphic. If you make the A into a graphic you still need to write the letter in the name so its still readabe.

[bgaff]

I don't know if I like the sun thing down at the bottom, but I do like the top section. Your info in the middle should be spruced up a bit too.

[deleted member]

alright here's try #... idk ... a lot lol

the center piece is 940X768 and the whole site will be designed for a 1024X768 screen (or larger) I'm prob. going to shrink down my logo a bit... plus I'm thinking of having an intro page (only about 3-4 seconds long) where my logo and name shows up bigger. anyways .. yeah!

[blackbelt135]

I really like the functionality and organization. I like how images are opened and viewed and closed. Nice big images too. And your artwork is great. You're very talented.

However, the only thing I don't care too much for is the homepage and the header at the top of the pages within your site. The color choice is fairly plain, as is the overall design. I'm not sure how to point you in a different direction, but I just feel like the site design is out-dated and very "blah". It doesn't seem to reflect your true talent, which isn't a good thing because people will judge a book by its cover...

Hope that helps, but again, just my .02. Don't feel like you have to change the complete look of your site just though just because I said it's plain and what not. It's just a matter of preference.

[deleted member]

Blackbelt135 - thx! yeah I know my site is a little plain (which is why i'm redesigning it :P if you look at my post above your post you'll see a rough draft of my new layout. right now i'm looking for crits. about it.

[blackbelt135]

MUCH better. I'm liking it. Very clean and modern, and a nice choice of colors. Quite an improvement from your previous design. (But, like I said in your other thread...I think you could still re-work your logo...)

Just curious...what applications are you using to design your site?

[brian_lsf]

Nice improvement!
I like the logo =) my only crit would be to use a serif-ed 'l' or uppercase 'L' to show it's not an "I", but again it looks nice just like it is now..
I don't think you need to shrink the logo, but you probably have to experiment more with different colour schemes

[tysoncadenhead]

I feel like the text on the navigation for the new layout needs to line up with something. It's not exactly centered, but it also doesn't line up with the logo at the top or the text at the bottom.

[eienblue25]

well, I think it looks simple and good ^^