Made a website for someone.. can I get your opinion?

[binka_nugget]

Hey guys.. so recently I saw a post on the viewaskew production message board. Jason Mewes (Jay from Jay and Silent Bob) is starting a production company and needs a website. He decided to ask the boardies to come up with something.. and whoever makes the best one will get a role in their movie. It's probably just a small walk-on role but still, that's so cool! Anyway.. I'm going to acting school next year so since I want to act, I thought it'd be a great step forward and maybe I'll be able to network a little bit. So as you can imagine, I'm REEEEALLY determined to win.

Here's my first mockup. No text yet.. I want the main layout completed first before I worry about the text. What do you think?

http://ashleyyan.com/winmark/

He has asked me to make the camera lens smaller, and the text on the bullseye a different color so it stands out.. but other than that, any suggestions?

I'm going to be making a few more mockups tonight.. wanna make sure I win this darn thing! :p

edit: I finished tweaking it.. any other suggestions are appreciated though! :)

[Reachoutrescue]

You did a very good job on it. I think it looks good.

[chocolatepuppy]

I think it looks good.;)

[Hellow]

Good job! If you need my help with anything, since websites and the like is my area of expertise, just let me know :).

[binka_nugget]

Aw thanks guys! I was planning on doing two more today but I guess I underestimated how long it would take for one! I worked on the first version for about 5 hours yesterday. Then he asked me to tweak it so I spent another 8 hours on it.. yikes! Hopefully this one mockup will be enough!

[k9krazee]

You're not using the full screen resolution available. There are extremely large margins on both the left and the right. Most resolutions computers use are 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 so I would take that into consideration, as well.

Your color scheme is extremely dark. If you were to print out this as a paper prototype you would lose a lot because the colors you chose do not contrast well. A trick I was taught to deal with contrasting colors for For/Mid/Back Ground is to print it out in black and white.

I've been taught that for nagivation you should not have to scroll down at all to see all of the available options. Also, why is the header so big? You want the website itself to be the main purpose, NOT the header.

I don't know how I feel about your navigation being in the typeface Broadway. I think you should look up and use websafe fonts, like Times New Roman or Verdana for example.

-Rich (the bf of k9krazee)
These are just my opinions as a graphic design student. ;)

[Hellow]

You're not using the full screen resolution available. There are extremely large margins on both the left and the right. Most resolutions computers use are 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 so I would take that into consideration, as well.

That would be fairly hard to compensate for, as the website would have to detect the screen resolution of every visitor and change accordingly. I actually use 1280x1024, but it still does not have massive margins.

[binka_nugget]

You're not using the full screen resolution available. There are extremely large margins on both the left and the right. Most resolutions computers use are 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 so I would take that into consideration, as well.

Your color scheme is extremely dark. If you were to print out this as a paper prototype you would lose a lot because the colors you chose do not contrast well. A trick I was taught to deal with contrasting colors for For/Mid/Back Ground is to print it out in black and white.

I've been taught that for nagivation you should not have to scroll down at all to see all of the available options. Also, why is the header so big? You want the website itself to be the main purpose, NOT the header.

I don't know how I feel about your navigation being in the typeface Broadway. I think you should look up and use websafe fonts, like Times New Roman or Verdana for example.

-Rich (the bf of k9krazee)
These are just my opinions as a graphic design student. ;)


Thanks for your feedback. I actually was aiming for larger margins on the side.. I forgot my laptop has a higher resolution than my desktop (a couple use 800x600, a couple use 1024x768). So I actually went and made the left and right margins even larger.. I wasn't aiming for using the full screen.

Also thanks for pointing out the color scheme. I thought it might have been a little dark but like mentioned, he has already seen it and only asked the logo to be changed slightly. Everything else was fine by the client. I plan to suggest changing font color -- But in the end, it's his decision.. not mine.

Again like mentioned, he has seen the first version and liked the emphasis on the header. Not my personal style, but not my site either.

For the body text, I use websafe fonts. Seeing as how the navigation buttons are images, it's as websafe as any other image on the site..

[Suki Wingy]

I think you should have a home button as the first link so that people clearly know how to get back to the homepage.

[Husky_mom]

I guess similar minds we have there k9krazee´s bf.. hehe... (graphi designer too ;))

I too think there is much grey in the sides... in my monitor, particularly the work one which always shows pics darker than any other monitor I´ve worked with... is a pain to read as it´s too dark (I read inmark tudios :p)... header too big... and the home button is a nice suggestion Suki! ;)

personally I don´t like the mustardy color shade.... but that´s just me

[Hellow]

There are a few errors that the W3C Markup Validator reported: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fashleyyan.com%2Fwinmark%2F&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0