|
Dump the blog and contact pages, and either incorporate a reduced about page into the header, or rewrite it. Former is maybe better, as you've paddeded the bio for no good reason. As you've moved the portfolio to the front page, all the links are an irrelevance. It's a single-page site. Note that because of this, WordPress is massive overkill, and you could just build a completely static one-page site. The header is too big relative to the information it contains, and it pushes the work below the fold; also, the style doesn't match that of the work. Also the web address/business name is barely referenced anywhere on-site. The colour scheme isn't right. In particular, you have grey text on a dark background, which is difficult to read. Also, the body text line height is too small (the 'f' overlap with the line below is particularly obvious). There is quite a lot wrong with the typography (eg tiny amounts of text set in a condensed font and not visually tied to other page elements), but that's one easy fix to make it look slightly better. The project images are minute, and there is no context. --- If you want this to be a business, the site needs to be approached as a business site. A potential client needs to know what the business is, what you can do for them, what you're especially good at, why the work you produce will help their business, why you are a better choice than any of the myriad other designers available, &c. Heirachy of information should be: - Moneyspider Design name (branding if that is extant). - What you as Moneyspider Design does/specialises in/etc (NOT what you like to do in your spare time, NOT where you went to school, NOT what your previous jobs were, NOT a portrait). - Contact info for Moneyspider Design (in descending order of importance: email and phonenumber, then twitter, then others. Skype is fairly important if you're getting non-UK work). - Previous work, in easily-viewable format. Edit: Set up an email address as well. Don't use gmail. RobertKerans fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Aug 12, 2013 |
#
¿
Aug 12, 2013 15:12
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 20, 2024 23:40 |
|
|
Creepy Goat posted:Suspicious Dish, what particularly about the icons don't you like? Generally the people we are 'selling' to are not the most tech-savvy so I tried to make the icons 'friendly' looking. Everyone I've shown so far in that target market has liked them, so I'd be interested to hear some critique. It's not about being tech-savvy: the icons don't really look like what they represent. Icons should be completely unambiguous. Also, and this is far more critical, they lack any kind of weight or depth. They're not very well drawn, either. This is carried on through the whole site in terms of typography and layout. There is no depth, no weight, no real differentiation based upon visual importance, no dynamism or energy. As a result, it is somewhat visually discomforting. On the plus side, and this is a massive plus, you have a basic architectural structure that will work, with careful styling. You need to look a lot more carefully at good minimal sites (in terms of colour balance, page layout, font choice etc), and why they work well. If you want something to read, this is good. Also, get your content, and build from that, DON'T build the site and then decide what content to put in, this is doing things rear end-backward. As it is, get content up, and stress-test your design with it. quote:I do need to update some of the assets like the favicon- the wonder of dropbox hosting is that the folder is synced to the files on my computer. I literally hit export from photoshop or illustrator and it automatically updates the file on the site. It's awesome. Yeah, it is, absolutely. Similar setups are what I push now for brochure sites, and [generally] it's miles better than WP etc for folio sites. EDIT: Also, don't even think about carousels/etc, and especially not parallax. Sort out the site colour,layout and typography-wise before adding fancy poo poo that, in the latter case, you've never used before. Parallax is useful for specific things* if you know what you're doing and have good reasons. It not something that can be effectively used to polish flawed designs. * this, for example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN5j4Lk-C6I RobertKerans fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Aug 13, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Aug 13, 2013 21:20
|
|
|
I hate recommending this because I hate frameworks, and I don't think that, in the short term, they will help you learn. BUT. You seriously need to look at something like Bootstrap, Zurb Foundation or PureCSS (Bootstrap being the most popular, and the one with the largest ecosystem). Pick one of them, and use it to build anything that goes live. The frameworks are designed so that developers [who may have little to no design training] can build quite good looking sites quickly and easily; it's analagous to your position, where, as it stands, you do not have the skills in place. If you're building anything that people will see, and that has even marginal importance, it shouldn't be going live looking like that. Using a framework means, generally, that things will just work. You can concentrate on improving layout, use of colour, typography and all that jazz.* For learning, practise building sites from scratch. Write them entirely without the use of the framework. But try to understand why frameworks do things, and what their limitations are. The developers of them are good and know what they're doing, but it's nearly impossible to reduce design to a systematic level: if you stick with it, you'll get a lot better, and you'll want to dump them entirely. *Also, if your client liked the current site, they will poo poo bricks if you provide them with a simple fameworked site that is consistent, nicely structured and magically works everywhere.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 30, 2013 13:44
|
|
|
jackpot posted:Fourth link down there's an article about Flexbox, and everybody needs to read it because holy poo poo is this gonna be fun when it's fully supported (which it will be, as soon as IE11 rolls out). We had a meeting about this a month or so back, it's pretty drat slick. Sticky footers, input styling, vertical centering...all kinds of poo poo we've been hacking for the past eight years is gonna be a whole lot easier. I used it in production for 2 sites that went up several months ago, with zero complaints: audience for both is rich and youngish and trendy, and 99% of the traffic is from some combination of tablets/modern browsers/macs, and autoprefixer sorts out IE10. It is excellent, if unusable for more general use.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2013 15:52
|
|
|
Eh, that's the music soundtracking the series of object-fitted html5 videos I have sitting pretty in their css grid layout positions on one of the sites. No probs so far!
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2013 18:04
|
|
|
Black Is Black posted:Been working on this off and on. I could use some fresh eyeballs and whatnot. http://www.designapparat.us As above. +. - There's not actually any real information on the front page. - The background competes with the foreground. - The sliver of background below the tweets/message box provides an expectation that the page should continue to scroll downward - the page has no grounding. - The h1 at that size is too heavy a face for light on dark, and hence vibrates somewhat. - The message seems friendly, but the typeface and all caps say otherwise. - The 'work' sections flow into one another, there's no real visual differentiation. - The work isn't easy to scan. Each image is big, but I can't see the description (for context) when I'm looking at the piece, I have to scroll, which is a minor annoyance. - I assume you're either switching to or switching out Nexa Book? It's only on the navigation at the minute. - And Avenir is beautiful font when used well. But you can't switch to optical kerning on the web, and simply dropping the tracking, although it will help for the titles, won't fix everything. Use something built for web use.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2014 20:36
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 20, 2024 23:40 |
|
|
Design in the browser and use Typekit, but it is definitely a bit of a crapshoot when I need to switch across to Illustrator/Indesign/PS. CC would completely remove this problem, but my work can't justify the cost vs. the deal they've currently got for CS6, so having a big library of fonts so there's something to hand that's as close as possible looks wise (or just weight and ratio at a pinch) has worked ok, ish.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2014 23:02
|
|