site crit please
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- leftwave
i'm working on a new site for the dept. of psychology at SMU. the current site is here:
http://www.smu.edu/psychology/in…and here's a new design i'm working on:
ftp://leftwave.com/public_html/i...thoughts? feedback? criticism?
thanks :)
- leftwave0
oops, sorry... bad link. use this:
http://leftwave.com/indevelopmen…
- leftwave0
uhhh, i don't get it. dead elephant? what's this got to do with it?
- absolutely nothing, ignore him.flashbender
- done. (thanks)
leftwave
- VectorMasked0
Well good thing they are going with a redesign coz...."be the future" well, you know ;o)
So your site...
The image is kinda weak. It actually has some negativity in there. Do we really need to show people about to commit suicide?
Use a good typeface for the menu. Your using Gotham within the image so why not trying Gotham bold or something for the menu. The menu is sad and lonely.
Also, darken the copyright info at the bottom. It's almost not readable on one of my monitors.- great feedback - thanks. the client wants to use that sculpture photo throughout the siteleftwave
- van_rijn0
the elephant.. the phant.. the font it is tough.
my crit is basically what VectorMasked said.
few points added:
you need more contrast on the foreground, i see what you are trying to do but it is not working.pic change. yeah they are crazy, but they dont have to jump of to the deep end. choose something uplifting.. not just a cliche of flowers. something better. like a nice sex session depending on the market. male/female.
needs bottom links for SEO, depending on how you code the top nav.
site needs to be wider than 800px . it is not 2002. try for a max width of 1000px fixed for the homepage. liquid for the rest.
- VectorMasked0
And I see it doesn't fit vertically in 800x600. But there's quite a bit of empty space on 1024. based on the content, do you think you will fit everything within that window? coz you got more width to play with since 800x600 is outta the question.
- matt310
need more screens for proper crit - not crazy about the nav.
- VectorMasked0
As much as we migh thate it... 800 could still be ok. Not only rich people with newer monitors and great vision will check out the site. Also, something like this would be accessed from lot of dated computers... like the ones at the libraries ;oP
- matt310
browser display stats
- don't bother with 800x600 - 8%matt31
- Dude. Never contradict me.
There's consequences. ;o)VectorMasked
- van_rijn0
yeah good point VectorMasked.
that is where content is key utilizing h tags, accessibility (field keys etc) while using css. that is where standards come into play. cant depend on an old browser (especially ie) to render content proper.
if you format headlines, titles, alts, divs, spans you names it, it will read proper.
- utopian20
i plead the 5th
- PSYKHO0
Not bad leftwave, my only comments would be to change the background as there is just to much blue on the page maybe use a light gray?
I would also make the site wider, at the moment it looks stuck on and if you made it wider would look better. Also the nav could be better, if you are planing of getting a nice CSS menu in place then make sure it does not blend in into the design i.e. give the navigation a background color to set it apart from the rest of the design.
The image of the people, I would not scale it down that much. Try and add the image again but this time make the image span across the page more. This will give more of a "fullness" feel to the page and not make it look that small.
But all that aside leftwave, the site looks a million times better than it does at the moment, good job!
Did not mean to rip your design apart like that, I am just a bit grumpy this morning and apologize if I came across as rude :)
- leftwave0
good point about the background - thanks.
is this better?
http://leftwave.com/indevelopmen…
- SigDesign0
I think the background is a bit odd being this giant fuzzy line... it's like something is supposed to be receding into there, but the site is sitting on top of it. Why not just continue the sky into the background?
Definitely is already an improvement over the old site, but I agree that the menu font is rather small, and actually the entire site is small and could be increased to between 960-1024px wide... is there more to that sculpture? Do they let you use other photos of it or take more photos of the sculpture?
Anyway, it's a simple front page (which is nice), and if you post some of the back pages I'm sure people will have lots of comments!
- Nairn0
Why are the small ethnically-diverse characters walking along a straw in to some PSD-generated clouds?
'Generate' clouds from photographic sources - that PSD stuff is horried when used literally like that.
The logo isn't quite as prominent as it should be - again, a consequence of not paying attention to the cloud area.
I feel the rollover state background should be a little deeper.
Get rid of those PSD clouds.
Message and base nav text might benefit from being a little darker/more distinct.
The PSD clouds are horrid.
It's a fairly pretty landing-page - but how are your content ares going to look? They're the important bits.
Oh yeah - and get rid of those clouds - they're awful.
- PSD clouds? Not a good idea.
I'd get rid of them - use real stock.Nairn - THERE ARE NO PSD CLOUDS. this is an actual photo of a sculpture in dallas: http://en.wikipedia.…leftwave
- PSD clouds? Not a good idea.
- VectorMasked0
I'd try a heavier weight on the menu, and I'd align the text in the menu to the left. Like 10px from the line the first letter on each menu item. Don't center it.
The menu in the footer should be above the copyright info and I'd add a couple of pixels in between the edge of the image, the copyright info line and the menu.
- SkyPoo0
I don't like the PSD clouds.
- Nairn0
Don't lie to me, leftwave - I've uncompiled the Generate Clouds tool in PS, created a C++ framework executable using heuristic and guassian regenerative tool structure and run a reverse analysis of the largest whole portion of your cloud background and the resultant hash comparison confirm, beyond all doubt, through a hashing that you've used the PSD tool there instead of photos.
I hereby absolutely and irrevocably insist that you change that image.
- Balls. I wish I'd taken the extra second it would've required to edit that properly.Nairn
- that really was quite good as it was, fair play.mikotondria3