Slaughter Posted March 5, 2006 Share Posted March 5, 2006 Hi folks I'm not all bad at building sites (dynamic content and easy administration), but I do SUCK at design. I'm in the process of making a site for our student business, and struggling badly. For now I've come up with this look (site is not functional, and in Norwegian). Is it a total disaster? What should I do to improve it? (besides begging Pete for help ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gimli Posted March 5, 2006 Share Posted March 5, 2006 Well, first of all, how complex do you want it to be? Are you looking to make it something along the lines of this forum in terms of complexity or keep it simple and fast loading even for 56k users? If you're going with something simple, generally it looks OK, but it needs more contrast, either change the color of the white background, or the greenish border. The arrows are not very visible, white and light greenish make them a little hard to notice, at least to me. Maybe if you switched to a darker shade of green (doesn't have to be too dark, but darker than this), than make the arrows red, blue or black (or any other color which will be visible. Then you can change the color of the blue text (just below the red text) to a lighter green when that text is selected (I assume clicking on it opens a new section). If you're looking for some extra stuff, maybe you want to use more fonts, for example the red text, maybe use one of the cooler fonts for it (reticulan, Boink LET, etc.). I'm assuming it's a title. Finally, you can use a line to separate the two persons in the picture (meaning you and whoever that is ), to make it more obvious where the text about the first person finishes and the next begins. If you have the time and will you can make custom arrows, make them look like buttons, and when they're pressed they look like you actually pressed them (just like standard windows buttons, such as "OK", "Cancel" etc.), or if you know someone who's good at painting, have him do that. Otherwise, I think it looks OK, of course, the links are not working, so I don't know what the rest is supposed to look like or what it does. I think it's best to look around some well designed sites to get an idea of what you'd want. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FullAuto Posted March 5, 2006 Share Posted March 5, 2006 I pretty much agree with Gimli. It's nice and simple at the moment, needs a little more contrast with the options/sections boxed off or divided up some other way (colour their background different shades of the same colour?) but apart from that it's solid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Accounting Troll Posted March 5, 2006 Share Posted March 5, 2006 What is your product or service? Equally important, what is your target market? When I am doing business over the internet, I prefer the company I am dealing with to have a more formal design to their website. Fonts like Ariel and Times New Roman give a more professional, if less imaginative, look. I think it is a bad idea to have prominent photographs of yourself and your friend on the front page as you are both young men wearing very informal clothes, a mixture that counts against you when trying to project a professional image. Maybe you could put the photographs into an obscure "about us" section, or get your hairdresser friend to do a few "artistic" poses that I would be happy to review as a favour Even if you were older and wearing formal business clothes, it would probably not be a good idea to have photographs of yourself on the front page. Most retailers with websites go for photographs that give you a good idea what they sell for a living. I like your corporate logo, but I think it does need a bit of work to make it look more polished. The current version looks like you did a rough sketch on paper and then scanned it in, which weakens your professional image. The way you have laid out the page with clearly seperate areas for seperate things is good, especially since you used a coloured border. However I don't like the current colour combination. Pale green and pale grey (pure white is used sparingly in web design because it is so dazzling) give you poor contrast and help foster the impression that your website has been quickly knocked together. I only found those two arrows when I happened to move my cursor across them and it change to denote that this was something I could press. I think you should play around with dark pastel shades, like the ones used here and the official Altar website. However if you do this, you may need to put your logo inside a box with a pale colour to prevent it disapearing because of poor contrast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaughter Posted March 5, 2006 Author Share Posted March 5, 2006 Thanks for the feedback guys! @Troll: This isn't the front page. We're arranging tailored theme vacations. Visiting Funcom (Norway's largest game developer), soccer match in England and so on. Arranging transportation, hotel, the event and everything. As for customers, it's potential tourists. Mostly a younger audience I'd say, and especially students. @Gimli: Not too advanced. No point in that, as all the site is going to do is to promote a few vacations. Besides, we'll only run the company for maximum 6 more months or so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Accounting Troll Posted March 7, 2006 Share Posted March 7, 2006 Well at least I now know why it's so hard to get tickets to watch Reading FC these days - you've sent 20,000 Norwegians over here If you get any complaints, send the complainer off on a free tour of the Black Mountains in winter - they will disappear down a sink hole and you'll never see them again. Quite a few Norwegian students go on hiking trips in the Welsh hills during the warmer months though, if you're stuck for ideas for holidays, although you often have to book accomodation in advance. Offa's Dyke is relatively obscure, even though it takes in the (mostly) beautiful land along the England/Wales border. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bomb Bloke Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 Design could use work (looks like a 404 page to me). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Praetoris Posted March 27, 2006 Share Posted March 27, 2006 I design things for a living, sites among other. I'd gladly help you as well, but it seems your link isn't working Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikal Posted March 27, 2006 Share Posted March 27, 2006 I design things for a living, sites among other. I'd gladly help you as well, but it seems your link isn't working The rest of the site works fine it's just the testny.php bit wihich is out of order. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaughter Posted March 29, 2006 Author Share Posted March 29, 2006 I design things for a living, sites among other. I'd gladly help you as well, but it seems your link isn't working Thanks for the offer! I got a very nice suggestion from Thorondor, and would probably have implemented his design. Thing is that we'll most likely shut the company down soon, so I'll not bother. If I need help for something in the future however, I'll be sure to bug you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Praetoris Posted March 29, 2006 Share Posted March 29, 2006 No worries, just send me a mail when you have something and I'll gladly give you some feedback goes for anyone else on this forum as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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