I believe this fits my goals much better than the previous whimsical design.
I believe that this has better typography and whitespace. I attempted to use the grid based approach for the layout, and the indentation for the text seems to make things stand out a bit better.
The background proved to be the hardest part for me. I started off with white, and then used the same brown as the underline. The brown seemed to work better than the white, but it was still pretty bad.
I fell back into using a similar background as I used in the previous concept and it feels OK, but still not great.
WarMage: i personally liked the previous one better. this one isnt bad or so (the typography is nice and the design itself is clearly arranged and concise), but i dunno this somehow gives me the feeling (i think because of the colors) that this site is from the year 1999. I cant really explain that further, but the colors just dont work with me...they look so boring and old to me
i really fell in love with this one though http://www.ozoneasylum.com/27917
Well it's a lot more straight than the last design, I thought that one was really coming along. I guess it's down to personal preferences and how you'd like to have your website reflect your own personality.
If you're looking for design inspiration try looking through magazines, specifically design, art and music orientated magazine to give you ideas about what what looks good at the moment, what suits you and how you can apply an idea to a website.
Many people may disagree with me here but I feel that designing a website is certainly something to do with fashion. There are certain 'looks' and 'feels' that designers will gravitate towards periodically and they fit a trend. I think this is probably why mas rightly says your site looks like something out of the 90's. It's not a very modern design.
Well it's a lot more straight than the last design, I thought that one was really coming along. I guess it's down to personal preferences and how you'd like to have your website reflect your own personality.If you're looking for design inspiration try looking through magazines, specifically design, art and music orientated magazine to give you ideas about what what looks good at the moment, what suits you and how you can apply an idea to a website.Many people may disagree with me here but I feel that designing a website is certainly something to do with fashion. There are certain 'looks' and 'feels' that designers will gravitate towards periodically and they fit a trend. I think this is probably why mas rightly says your site looks like something out of the 90's. It's not a very modern design.Hope this helps...
I totally agree with Blaise on this one. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I believe the following designs are rather trendy (some are obviously trendy):
There is also a tendency to go back to the old school style, but I do think it is rather difficult to make something visually interesting. Some of them work, some just don't.
Additionally, I reckon they have a point above, you concept #4 wasn't perfect but there was definitely something there.
I think that one of the reasons why you're not (nobody is really) convinced by your concept #5 is because of the amount of colours and the colour scheme; I'll try to explain better: your dark red and blue ("old fashion" colours for a website), combined with the grey background, give a rather dull atmosphere. The top menu needs some work, as well as the body lettering. I quite like your headings shape wise, but again not sure about the choice of colours. The tendency is to use much brighter colours nowadays, at least that's what I think. A grey background works very well with a bright dominant colour (orange, cyan, yellow, etc.) but here it takes way to much importance comparing to the main content.
To go back to the body font, I think it is too big, it feels like you made it big to fill in the page.
From: Rochester, New York, USA Insane since: May 2000
posted 05-22-2006 17:13
What happened with the concept #4 was that I started with the concept and it was a lot of fun working on. Designing the little people, putting in a lot of color, but when I look at the site it just does not feel like it defines _me_.
I believe this design is closer to feeling like _me_ than the previous concepts.
The colors are very bland, and it does feel like it falls a bit flat. I have to keep working on this.
How did I do with whitespace on this one? Is this more the direction someone would need to go when trying to get over that problem?
I like the patterned background it deals with the whitespace well, and having an off-white colour for your content BG makes a difference too. In the last thread on concept #4 I linked to a few websites, one of which was for a colour scheme picker, I would recommend playing with that and finding a nice scheme, perhaps even base it on one of your current colours you've chosen, I think the red is quite nice and so is the blue, but together they come quite heavy.
Here are a few sites that follow some modern design trends, the first two are from programmers, the second two are from designers...
Wow, that's more like it! How are you planning to use the white space on the right hand side? Well done, I agree with Hugh, I think it's your best attempt.
Sorry I'm being a bit fussy, but why is that tag line black and why is it that close to the logo?! you could make it slightly bigger too... Now shut me up
From: Rochester, New York, USA Insane since: May 2000
posted 05-24-2006 17:26
Wow. That was not even close to the response I was expecting.
The logo/tagline is what started this design.
I couldn't get black to work for me so I switched back to white and had to change the "Dan" to another color, business blue is what I picked, and I just inverted the tag line to black from white. The tag line text changed because I thought up a better little line.
It didn't feel right to have the logo aligned left but the tag line centered under it, so I pushed it right to add some balance as having it on the right made the logo feel heavy. The basic structure stayed pretty constant though.
So that is the why.
Could you elaborate a bit on what you are looking for.
Do you feel that logo should be bigger? or just the tag line. As for the coloring should I dop it down to a similar color to the rest of the site text? or do you feel that it would look better with some additional color?
From: Rochester, New York, USA Insane since: May 2000
posted 05-24-2006 17:41
How would you sugest that I use a gradient fill?
I was thinking that I would be putting a graphic of some kind on the right hand side. I am thinking maybe about the size of a tower banner.
My current idea was to take some pictures of my work area and use that either desaturated or with a color overlay to make it fit with the rest of the site.
Right now the site is very flat, that is baked into the design. I could try adding some gradients maybe behind the menu such as was used in the sliding doors of CSS tutorial, I could also give the tabs some depth.
I really can not see how I would add that to the content area. Any ideas or sugestions would be appreciated.
From: Rochester, New York, USA Insane since: May 2000
posted 05-24-2006 18:38
I tried playing with some gradients. I have also added an image (this is not my setup) just to see how it might sit in there. My setup is a good deal darker that the one shown so it might work a little better, but I am not sure how an image would fit in there.
The gradients on the top and bottom are good, I'm not so sure about the tabs though.
I'm not a fan of that image, I was thinking of something a bit flatter, and perhaps top left/right aligned, a background image or watermark. Remember the pixel man you had in the BG of your previous designs? But obviously something that's more fitting.
Wow. That was not even close to the response I was expecting.The logo/tagline is what started this design.I couldn't get black to work for me so I switched back to white and had to change the "Dan" to another color, business blue is what I picked, and I just inverted the tag line to black from white. The tag line text changed because I thought up a better little line.It didn't feel right to have the logo aligned left but the tag line centered under it, so I pushed it right to add some balance as having it on the right made the logo feel heavy. The basic structure stayed pretty constant though.So that is the why.Could you elaborate a bit on what you are looking for.Do you feel that logo should be bigger? or just the tag line. As for the coloring should I dop it down to a similar color to the rest of the site text? or do you feel that it would look better with some additional color?
The alignment doesn't bother me whatsoever, it looks quite nice to me.
I just meant that you could integrate your tag-line a bit better, I find the black text a bit hard comparing to the rest of the lay-out, and you could give it a bit more space. Something like this perhaps:
I'm not suggesting that blue is better, probably that grey would work quite well too, it's up to you. My choice of type face isn't the best either, it's too fat, but you get the idea...
quote: WarMage said:
I was thinking that I would be putting a graphic of some kind on the right hand side. I am thinking maybe about the size of a tower banner. My current idea was to take some pictures of my work area and use that either desaturated or with a color overlay to make it fit with the rest of the site.
Be careful with image in the right hand side, they might be confused with advertisement. I would avoid an image with borders at all costs, but mayber that a faded picture as background would look nice; you should experiment. What Blaise suggested is also wise.
quote: WarMage said:
Right now the site is very flat, that is baked into the design.
It might be flat, but it's well aired, and I think it's much better than your concept #5 in that regard.
quote: WarMage said:
I tried playing with some gradients. I have also added an image (this is not my setup) just to see how it might sit in there. My setup is a good deal darker that the one shown so it might work a little better, but I am not sure how an image would fit in there.Dan @ Code Town(Edited by WarMage on 05-24-2006 18:39)
I quite like your gradients. Other than that, how about reducing the global width slightly? Make your page, let's say, 80% wide?
These are only suggestions; hope it helps a bit...
3 quickies:
* I think the gradient behind the buttons and the lower one should be "tighter" or shorter if you get me.
* The second thing is, I recon the tabs would look better if they were a little bigger, giving them more padding for the text so to speak, definately width-wise.
* I dont think you should have a line under the tab which is open.
From: Out on the Sea of Madness... Insane since: Dec 2003
posted 05-25-2006 20:14
Wow! Version 7 is looking very nice there WM. I liked the faded image taking up the right side of the page as you showed in your last pic, but I don't see that in the latest update.
Have you thought of rollovers or anything else along those lines?
(For rollovers I recon you'll need to be careful with this design, I'd personally keep the dark grey links that rollover to black, simply benign and effective.)
I saw you made an accordian script on your current home page, i imagine you'd be able to fit that into the design very nicely. If you took away the headers in the accordian, and smoothened it. From fresh; if each page wiped horizontally, or scrolled horizontally it would look good imho.
Maybe not, as per usual im just throwin' stuff out there to ponder
This is looking very nice, Warmage.
I was actually pretty fond of the previous concept, but this is quite nice, and perhaps more appropriate to your purpose.
Like Rhyssa, I also miss the faded image in the latest iteration.
I would very highly recommend any hover effects are kept subtle.
One thing I need to say: the "v 7" bit needs to go!
There are probably few things that bug me more than version numbers on web sites
From: Rochester, New York, USA Insane since: May 2000
posted 05-26-2006 21:31
As for the image. The one that was there was shamelessly lifted from some computer desk selling site. I have to take some actual photos of my work environment and use those.
As for the version number. I am ok with litting that go, but I will need to find some other concept to replace it. I like the splash of color that it adds.
The previous concept might get used, but not for this particular site. That was a fun design but would not get the right message accross IMO.
I have updated the site to include the background image. Without having PS it is a pain in the ass to make anything worthwhile up in the upper right hand corner.
I am going to wait and change that when I have the capital to purchase PS.
posted 05-22-2006 05:47
you could make it slightly bigger too... Now shut me up 
