Topic: redesign of kewlster.com

Hey guys. I want to make my new site (kewlster.com) good, so I redesigned it from the last time. I'm still adding in some content, and I'm gonna add in some features with the templates, but anyways could you please review the site and give me some useful tips on how I can make it better. Thanks.

P.S. If you haven't guessed it already the url is http://www.kewlster.com

http://www.kewlster.com

So, I bop over to http://www.kewlster.com , and what am I immediately assaulted by? Code that isn't compliant, but is trying, oh so dutifully, to be (see image01). The left-hand navigation, while simplistic, is broken. At first I thought it was a design decision, but when I hopped out of Mozilla into IE4/Mac, I realized that you intended them to be seperate. As you can imagine, I was upset about this.

My first design question, however, is how black grid on red background means fire. (shrug)

The functionality all seems in place (though the strange Tagbox leaves a great deal to be desired), so I won't comment on that. Design, however, leaves a great deal to be desired, as we mentioned above.

Looking at image02, we note that the shadow under the "logo" is .. well, it's very messy. I've never been a fan of drop-shadows on non-3D objects, but it can be done well. Unfortunately, this one is not done well. It doesn't give it any "POP," and instead gives a great deal of "MISTAKE."

In terms of information architecture, we move to image03, which shows a couple things. First, you've got black text, light-grey text, yellow, underlined, non-linking text, pink text, and yellow, linking text. This simply will not do. I want to click "Writings," but I am not allowed to. You need to further dillineate your text structure. It is very, very messy. First, I would change the header ("Writings," in this case) to black. I would change the pink to the light grey, eliminating the pink in the design. Keep in mind that your links are made different colors by default because they have to be differentiated from the body.

My final coding concern is looking up at the "Customize" box (image04). For some reason, your boxes are obscure. Try centering them, and give them all the same thickness of stroke. It looks awkward. And get rid of the pink. We don't like that many colors in typographical displays.

I think that covers my review for now.

---- Images referenced above are linked below ----
image01
image02
image03
image04


s t e p h e n

Thank you very much for your help. You gave me some very useful advice and I will be changing those things as soon as I have time. Keep the advice comin guys.

http://www.kewlster.com