Damo Posted December 7, 2004 Report Share Posted December 7, 2004 Howdy, I've recently started my own business called Custom Design Guitars and I've been working on the design for the website.It's gone through a few incarnations and I think I've finally settled on a design I like.Anyone fancy giving any opinions on the design? The colours? The layout? Whether it fits in with what the company does?Bear in mind this is only a design page, not the actual page, so links don't work, there's no logo, text isn't final draft etc etcwww.customdesignguitars.comCheersDamo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nellie2 Posted December 7, 2004 Report Share Posted December 7, 2004 Hmmm... nice! White on black can be a bit hard on the eyes though and the text is a bit small in places. Overall though. I like it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homecomputeraid Posted December 7, 2004 Report Share Posted December 7, 2004 I'm not all that artistic, but it looks like a good design to me. :)Code wise, I recommend putting in some meaningful meta tags, like keywords and a description, as well as alt tags for your graphics to bring your ranking up in search engines. Since it's heavy on graphics, you might want descriptive alt tags.Let us know as it progresses! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D4\/!d Posted December 7, 2004 Report Share Posted December 7, 2004 Hello Damo, yeah it looks good. However, I have to agree the text is too small for me. And Orangey/yellow can be considered aggressive. (Bees sting) Plus of course a number of men are colour-blind (and don't know it) and won't be able to tell it's orange. A good start though. Hope it goes well for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boris Posted December 7, 2004 Report Share Posted December 7, 2004 Damo - pm'd you !D'oh ! Sorry I must remember to actually read of ALL a post before replying :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damo Posted December 7, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 7, 2004 Thanks for all the replies so far - The text issue will be changed, I don't think it will be white when I do the full site, it will also be a little bigger.Thanks Homecomputeraid for the Tag tips, i'll be sure to add those!Oh and ignore any spelling mistakes or grammatical errors - 1st draft only!! :D :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djohn Posted December 7, 2004 Report Share Posted December 7, 2004 Good start Damo. Text is not fitting into the panels. overlapping at the top and bottom edges. Viewed with IE6 17" TFT at 1280x1024. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damo Posted December 7, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 7, 2004 Good start Damo. Text is not fitting into the panels. overlapping at the top and bottom edges. Viewed with IE6 17" TFT at 1280x1024. :)hmmmm really??Any chance you can post a screen shot so I can see how bad? Then I'll alter the cells and alignment of the text!TaDamo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted December 8, 2004 Report Share Posted December 8, 2004 From a complete layman on this subject, it looks a good start to me. I agree about the text size, but see no problems with the colours, but then I do have perfect colour vision. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trackrat Posted December 8, 2004 Report Share Posted December 8, 2004 I use a LG 17" tft monitor and it looks ok on mine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djohn Posted December 8, 2004 Report Share Posted December 8, 2004 This is how it appears on my display. at 1280x1024 17" TFT. IE6 browser. :unsure: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
expertec Posted December 8, 2004 Report Share Posted December 8, 2004 Djohn, if you adjust the text size it will fit back together. :blink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djohn Posted December 8, 2004 Report Share Posted December 8, 2004 Your right expertec :) Adjusted back to medium and it fits fine. I always have mine set on the second one down in IE "Larger" and I think a lot of people of my age group would have the same setting or even on "Largest". Shouldn't the panels expand to fit?I'm not being harsh to damo's site, I think it looks great but he needs it to look spot on for every person who visits it whatever their settings are, or which browser they are using. Just tried in Firefox and at the default setting it looks fine but take it up one size in text [The one I use] and it overlaps quite a lot. Not been able to test it at different resolutions, [TFT] maybe someone with a CRT monitor could try out 800x600 through to 1600x1200? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zfactor Posted December 14, 2004 Report Share Posted December 14, 2004 From a purely technical point of view, the website needs some improvement.First and foremost, there is way too much nesting going on in there. By my count there are like, 5 or 6 tables nested within eachother. Many of the style problems that these tables seem to be there for can be easily handled by CSS. I don't know any web-designer who would nest so many tables and is not asking for trouble later on.Also, the site is completely image based. It almost looks like somebody made the site in an image program, chopped it up, and then just assembled it with all these tables. One way to cut down the table problem is to use these images as backgrounds of cells instead of images placed in cells. A problem with all these images also, is that it can be a killer for some 56k users (or even 38.8k users).One reason i suggested that you use the images as a cell background (easily done with CSS) is because you can make a smaller slice and just have it repeat vertically. This will also remedy some of the problems that occurs when the text is resized, because the images wind up seperated and broken by spaces. (mainly along the edges). This occurs because when the text is made larger, the table cells expand. However, when the cells expand beyond what you want them to be, the spacing between images that make up the style become much larger, and the syle is ruined. (For example, if the image is say... 70 pix high, and the cell is expanded to be 90 pix high, a 20 pix space is left between the bottom of the image and the top of the next image in the cell below it).The design flaws are not noticable when the page is left with those tiny fonts, but once the fonts are made larger, everything goes out of sync. This makes it harder on the visually impaired.Visually, the site is very nice, and whoever made it has alot of artistic talent. I do not mean to sound like I am totally knocking the website, it is just that I am more of a code-side guy when it comes to websites. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homecomputeraid Posted December 14, 2004 Report Share Posted December 14, 2004 Damo,When you start actually getting ready to post the site, and you want to know what keywords will to use for your meta description and keywords, you can try using a Keyword Effecitveness Index to maximize your chances of getting buyers and coming up high on Search Engines.Sincerely, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damo Posted December 14, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 14, 2004 Thanks for all the advice and help folks, i DO appreciate it!I'm still working hard at writing all the content, as well as getting the portfolio up!CheersDamo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
facx Posted December 29, 2004 Report Share Posted December 29, 2004 Looks good, but itsnt it "enquiries" instead of [email protected]? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damo Posted January 4, 2005 Author Report Share Posted January 4, 2005 Looks good, but itsnt it "enquiries" instead of [email protected]?Heh, I'm suprised nobody noticed before.I'm hoping nobody will notice, because I've had brochures and cards all made up with that spelling!!! Can you say...DOH!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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