New Website Front End

[ddustin]

Here's a screen shot of my new website.

 

Let me know what you think good, bad and the ugly.

 

David

 

EDIT: Note, the new site isn't up yet. I'm building it off line for now, and my head hurts.

[Zaryin]

Can't really comment, except to say I like it.

[starwarsguy]

NICE!

[fleebag]

Nice Sci-Fi/Industrial Feel. The navigation seems clear enough (without having the actual site to confirm, of course). All the controls seem very clear. I'm assuming that the little sliders are for volume and progress, but would be easy enough to figure out. I really like your metallic looking envelope.

 

One comment is that the image is very wide compared with the width of most peoples browsers. If the image is a static one, you will need to decide how wide a browser window you want to support and crop it. A reasonable value for current browsers if you want to target people with smaller screens is 800x600. You will want to allow a little for the browser frame, too.

 

It will be nice to see it live.

[cfree68f]

Hey David,

 

the one thing that stood out to my eye was the use of more than 2 colors. Not saying thats a bad thing.. but for the industrial look of the site it seemed off a little.

 

When you look at most branding attempts, they have color palettes that fall into 2 or maybe 3 families of color. the red and the orange could be in the same family but when you add the blue they stand apart and with the gray as well they pop more than they should considering they are just graphical elements and not buttons.

 

I liked the more muted colors, burgandy and the blue behind your text block, better for the industrial feal. I might also make the panel float over black of perhaps a darker burgandy in order to make it the focus of the page. With the boiler plate it makes you want to see other panels below the center panel.

 

All that said.. it is a great image. I made these comments after going to your site and looking at the clients you do work for. It seems to me that if you cleaned the image up a little.. ie.. a little less texture, a couple less colors, and some more accented areas of focus to guide the eye.. you'd have an award winning site there.

 

Hope you don't take any of these criticisms as bad ones, I really do like the image, I just figured since you posted in the WIP you might want an honest critique.

 

Oh.. I also agreed with the width comment. I like the size vertically.. and I like really wide letterbox type sites.. Hince the opening graphic on my site.. but that image might be wider than the average computer monitor setting.

 

Keep up the cool work.

 

C

[robcat2075]

I agree it may be a bit busy, but #1... I think "Dustin Productions" should be way more prominent. That's you... why hide it? I know, it's in your URL... but still.

 

And I would have some of your work (your best single image) be visible right off the bat, instead the text pitch. The work you've shown here looks good, make it start working for you

 

Why two "home" buttons and two "contact" buttons? Just one each. And isn't "e-mail" part of contact?

 

Your category buttons are so small. Rethink the lay out so they can be bigger and have a bit of a teaser graphic on each one.

 

I might take Colin's note about reducing the color scheme all the way to all-gray, and let your portfolio graphics that show up in the window be the central splash of color.

 

Anyway, just my brainstorming thoughts.

[Mendi]

Hi!

I like the hi-tech feel in it, altought in my humble opinion there are too many not necessary elements in the background that may distract the user attention.

 

However, the interface is easy, clear and solid. I'll take care of the font types at the menu, Verdana doesn't seem the most hi-tech font out there so I'd check it out (maybe in www.dafont.com).

 

Greetings and keep the good work!

[ddustin]

Thanks for all your comments!

 

The flavor of the site is intended to be a little more far reaching than just industrial.

There are tabs for Forensic/legal and product sales etc.

 

This page is actually in about 2 levels, so it's not the first one they'll see (even though that's what the title was).

 

The site will have a flash half with mainly information, and an HTML half that will house most of the animations. I also plan on using this interface on a business card CD.

 

As far as it being wide and not very tall... I took a screen shot and cropped down the superfluous territory.

 

I'll have to think about the colors.

 

Thanks again for all the constructive criticism, I really appreciate it.

 

David

[Paul Forwood]

Hi, David.

 

I would agree wih the above comments regarding look and feel. I would tone down all the colours and reserve vivid/bright colours for where ever you want the focus of attention to be. The decorative borders are too distracting at the moment and it's not something that you find much in modern industrial design. Safety first!

 

I can see your name stencilled onto the grey metal plate at the bottom. 'DUSTIN'

in the manner that you find on the back of a fork-lift truck or modern compressor. Big, bold yellow painton a dark background or the otherway around. Think DeWalt or look at other industrial branding. Something that says."Industrial Strength".

 

It looks a bit like the interface for a computer game at the moment. I get the feeling that there might be rotating graphics overlayed on the left side and folders and filenames displayed on the right side.

I'd like to see a working mock-up running on the internet to get a better feel for it.

 

Anyway, good luck and I look forward to seeing how it develops.

 

All the best!