Ignore the fact that I am using a blog script... the main point of the site was to get my philosophic work up on the web, but I also like to mess around with web design. So I would prefer you focus on the actual site design and give some feedback.
Thanks all,
Marcus
KDLA
11-06-2006, 03:32 PM
All in all, I'm not impressed with the design. The color scheme is odd; it looks like you've applied a banner to another design; it's not one cohesive design thought.
Also: The white text on the light gray background is difficult for me to read. (I'm in a bright room.) Also, the small medium gray text on the light gray is difficult to read, too.
Keep plugging away -- you'll get it -
KDLA
disembodied
11-06-2006, 08:18 PM
All in all, I'm not impressed with the design. The color scheme is odd; it looks like you've applied a banner to another design; it's not one cohesive design thought.
Also: The white text on the light gray background is difficult for me to read. (I'm in a bright room.) Also, the small medium gray text on the light gray is difficult to read, too.
Keep plugging away -- you'll get it -
KDLA
Thanks for the comments... the font thing was something I had been meaning to work on and hadn't... I just changed it to good 'ol black, it works.
As for the color scheme... I am assuming you don't mean the color scheme is odd, just that the header doesn't fit... I understand that, but the idea behind it was to disengage the logo - the art - from the text - the work... its an idea taken from art of the absurd... more art based then web design based certainly, but its juxtaposition at its best and really has some creative purpose behind it... some people dig that stuff and others don't, but I certainly won't be changing that.
Anyway, thanks again for the comments, the fonts have been taken care of.
kocisz
11-07-2006, 06:47 AM
Two remarks from the design perspective:
-remove the noise from the banner
-consider revision og the color scheme - the reddish and creamy banner does not match up too well with the otherwise gray layout
disembodied
11-08-2006, 07:45 PM
Two remarks from the design perspective:
-remove the noise from the banner
-consider revision og the color scheme - the reddish and creamy banner does not match up too well with the otherwise gray layout
Thanks for the comments,
on the first one... why? I don't want to do something without justification.
On the second one... well other then its not supposed to look like a cream color (I may need to fix that) the color difference is the point, see the post above. But the cream is actually a red to white gradient, and it gets orangy and that must be what you are calling cream... i can see it, so I may look into that.
Waylander
11-08-2006, 08:27 PM
If it was my site I would try and move the rest of the style of the site towards having the same style and colours as the banner.
The white background on the right colum stands out way too much for my taste.
As the rest of the site has dark background shades. The left column is where the main content is, I would want that to stand out more.
Good Luck :)
Waylander.
KDLA
11-08-2006, 09:26 PM
well other then its not supposed to look like a cream color (I may need to fix that) the color difference is the point, see the post above. But the cream is actually a red to white gradient, and it gets orangy and that must be what you are calling cream... i can see it, so I may look into that.
Just remember that not every screen will be like yours -- some will be 16-bit color, others 32, depending on the type/age of screen. Also, just the brand of computer/monitor technology makes a big difference in the display, too.
I recently designed a site in what looked like a dark green-blue. On the client's "cheap" screen, it looked yellow-green, and boy it was ugly. I had to adjust the color to "web safe" colors, to make it more consistent. Did it look as good? Not really, but at least it was consistent.
KDLA
disembodied
11-09-2006, 09:40 PM
If it was my site I would try and move the rest of the style of the site towards having the same style and colours as the banner.
The white background on the right colum stands out way too much for my taste.
As the rest of the site has dark background shades. The left column is where the main content is, I would want that to stand out more.
Good Luck :)
Waylander.
Thanks for the comments (KDNA too)...
I switched the colors up a bit, the main content has a white background and the sidebar has the same background as the body (CCC, silver, whatever you wanna call it)
I also calmed down the banner quite a bit, but kept some red and added some red throughout the site to make it not seem so 'out of place'...
The banner may still need some work, I am still playing with that, but i welcome any comments on the site now.
Thanks all,
Marcus
stevensol
11-09-2006, 09:54 PM
Thanks for the comments (KDNA too)...
I switched the colors up a bit, the main content has a white background and the sidebar has the same background as the body (CCC, silver, whatever you wanna call it)
I also calmed down the banner quite a bit, but kept some red and added some red throughout the site to make it not seem so 'out of place'...
The banner may still need some work, I am still playing with that, but i welcome any comments on the site now.
Thanks all,
Marcus
now there you go... now you have an actual color scheme.
kocisz
11-12-2006, 01:29 AM
Looks much better now I must say..
innominds
11-12-2006, 11:26 AM
The design is not bad, but the header seems to be big in size. Moreover the text seems to be left-aligned, not justified.
disembodied
11-12-2006, 12:50 PM
The design is not bad, but the header seems to be big in size. Moreover the text seems to be left-aligned, not justified.
It is left-aligned, is there something wrong with that? I have been out of web design for over a year, so I may be out of the loop on some trends.
Also, I am not sure if anyone noticed or not but I use a table with two columns for the content and sidebar (and then place divs in there so I get my dashed lines, etc.). I didn't want to do this, obviously, but I couldn't find a way to get the columns to line up just with divs (obviously I know how to use the float and what not) because floating them pulls them out of the flow and therefore breaks them out of the containing DIVs. Anyway, does anyone know a way to get rid of this table? Its not a huge deal considering its only two columns, but I would like pure CSS if at all possible.
-Marcus
disembodied
11-15-2006, 12:20 PM
http://disembodied.us
I have updated my site, I am now using a different back system for posting and what not. This has led to me changing up the way things are displayed as well (much cleaner in my opinion).
Anyway, the colors haven't changed or anything, but any new comments would be appreciated.
As well, I am still trying to figure out this table issue I am having... as I said before, I don't want to use a table like I am having to do to separate the content area and the right column, but floats won't work because they break out of the containing divs if I float them. Any ideas would be great on how to switch this to totally tableless instead of nearly so except for one little 2 column table.
Thanks,
Marcus
Rattify
11-16-2006, 09:11 AM
They will not break out of the container if you make one big container holding the whole page and then start the floated columns on a new line after the top column.
This should work fine, I have used the design myself.
CAVEAT: I'm still learning and you should test this design before putting it live to make sure.
disembodied
11-16-2006, 10:13 AM
They will not break out of the container if you make one big container holding the whole page and then start the floated columns on a new line after the top column.
This should work fine, I have used the design myself.
CAVEAT: I'm still learning and you should test this design before putting it live to make sure.
Yeah I knew that would (should?) work, but the problem is getting my tabbed menu with the dark gray piece under it to show up correctly... when i tried to do it this way before I get the tabbed menu touching the main and rightbar divs so the dark gray (#666) goes away.
Thanks for the help though, I may test it out again... I think I may know what to do this time around.
Rattify
11-16-2006, 07:09 PM
You can try giving the div that has your menu in it a margin-bottom value to move the two content divs further down. Not sure if this is what you meant though. Otherwise, maybe you can use relative positioning of the content divs to force them to appear further down than they would otherwise?
disembodied
11-24-2006, 12:07 PM
You can try giving the div that has your menu in it a margin-bottom value to move the two content divs further down. Not sure if this is what you meant though. Otherwise, maybe you can use relative positioning of the content divs to force them to appear further down than they would otherwise?
I am working on this right now, the problem I still think I am going to have is just the colors... if i move the menu margin down (or position the content down) the color that ends up separating the menu from the content isn't the same color I have now, nor can I just change the color because it changes the color elsewhere as well.
Nonetheless, I am gonna figure that one out, but until then I have added two new themes to the site (built from scratch themes) and you can check them out via the 'theme switcher' on the sidebar (right sidebar for two of the themes, left for the other). I would appreciate reviews of those other themes as well, which are completely CSS driven.
Obviously one of them (simple lines) is supposed to be a very simple theme for those people that don't like to deal with images and colors and what not, so while I'll read comments about that theme being 'too bland' you'll be preaching to the choir :)
Thanks all
Rattify
11-24-2006, 12:14 PM
The Disembodies Studios title overlaps with the top navigation in Opera on the Simple Lines layout. Other than that, I like the layout, except maybe move the ads to below your side nav links. At first glance they looked like part of the page itself and not a seperate ad, and you don't want users mixing up YOUR links with the ad's links.
The Inverted Tabs layout seems broad and garish to my eye. though. The title is too cluttered on the left and too empty on the right. also, the text on the active link is hard to see against the dark background.
disembodied
11-24-2006, 01:58 PM
The Disembodies Studios title overlaps with the top navigation in Opera on the Simple Lines layout. Other than that, I like the layout, except maybe move the ads to below your side nav links. At first glance they looked like part of the page itself and not a seperate ad, and you don't want users mixing up YOUR links with the ad's links.
The Inverted Tabs layout seems broad and garish to my eye. though. The title is too cluttered on the left and too empty on the right. also, the text on the active link is hard to see against the dark background.
Thanks for the info, but I can't get the title to overlap the links in my version of opera... what screen resolution are you running at? I wonder if that may be the problem.
As for the ads, I had been contemplating moving them down anyway, so I will probably do that sooner or later.
For the Inverted Tabs, is it showing up as the lighter blue (the color of the header div) on the active tab? with a black background? The lighter blue was supposed to offset the black text, but I looked back at it and I can see why it looks a little hard to read, so I may just leave the text color white no matter what, and just change the background color and what not.
As for the 'title being too cluttered', i am assuming you just mean on the header banner... and yeah, its because the design is fluid, I can't really fill up the entire header because people with smaller screens would see clutter, but I may look into something that keeps it a little more even. You are not the first person to mention it looking too bare on the right and/or too cluttered on the left (mostly too bare on the right)
Rattify
11-24-2006, 03:37 PM
Well, the emptiness is less of a problem than the clutter for me. But you can make the sun graphic float to the right and then it will not be so cluttered on the left.
I think keeping the text white on the active links for Inverted Tabs is a good idea because it is still apparent which link is active by the change in background. But the background is not showing up black for active tabs--it's showing up blue, the same color as the background of your header banner. I'm also wondering about the ochre color for the a:hover and not sure why you chose that?
I'm viewing in Opera 9 at 1024 by 768, but it also overlaps in IE for me, in Windows XP.
Good luck!
disembodied
11-24-2006, 11:19 PM
Well, the emptiness is less of a problem than the clutter for me. But you can make the sun graphic float to the right and then it will not be so cluttered on the left.
I think keeping the text white on the active links for Inverted Tabs is a good idea because it is still apparent which link is active by the change in background. But the background is not showing up black for active tabs--it's showing up blue, the same color as the background of your header banner. I'm also wondering about the ochre color for the a:hover and not sure why you chose that?
I'm viewing in Opera 9 at 1024 by 768, but it also overlaps in IE for me, in Windows XP.
Good luck!
Thats odd, I am running at a higher resolution but even when I open a pane and pull it across (to shrink the view screen for the actual website) I cannot get the text to overlap the links... I will look into it more though.
As for the inverted tabs theme: I may have written incorrectly before, the active tab is supposed to have a background that blends with the header background and the unactive tabs are a darker color. I think it is showing up right for you (other then the font color will remain white when I get a chance to fix that).
As for the 'ochre' color (I'm not sure what that means) for the hover, I am assuming its the brown-ish kinda color. The only reason I ever even thought of that color is because I went to one of those fun color scheme chooser websites and put in the blue that you see in the header and had it output other colors to go with it... I think I am color retarded sometimes, so I hoped maybe that would help colors match better, but perhaps not.
Rattify
11-25-2006, 10:55 AM
Yeah, I was referring to the brownish orange.
It would go with the blue if you were decorating a house (maybe this was a paint website you visited?) but as a link hover color it looks sort of arbitrary. I would either add some of that color to other areas of the site, like the sun graphic, or else pick a different one that has something more in common. Maybe a strong red--both are primary colors and that might be enough to tie them together.
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