new site feedback - design concerns

00sully

Hi guys,

thought I'd put this up here for suggestions/improvements

http://remymusic.twinstorm.com/index.htm

Just have the initial design done with little/no functionality at present. Going for the grungy look here that is prevalent on "artist" web sites Will be turning it into a CMS for the client involved over the next few weeks.

Just wanted to get feedback on the design aspect so far - browsershots shows it looks the same in most major browsers - Im wondering does it though?!

Main concerns are:

1. Speed of which the site loads as it is pretty image heavy - I haven't compressed the images hugely as the site needs to look slick. the host is notoriously slow too :mad:
2. Resolution of different users. It's a fairly high res site.
3. Increasing text size in firefox gives me image artifacts at a few levels - wondering why this is?!? just a few lines where it seems background images are getting out of alignment on a zoom in the browser.

JavaScript being enabled is a must for this demo to work properly - I'll probably get rid of that when I integrate the CMS. It does degrade "ok-ish" without it though.

anywho comments mucho appreciated :pac:

GAAman

Well without being a big professional web developer (dreamweaver and notepad are the heights of my abilities) i like it, i am on firefox 3.0.6 here and the images and text are fine. It loaded up really fast so no worries there and i do like the rollover buttons

One thing though for whatever reason when i clicked the music button it opened in a new tab but every other button (including music again after that to see if it would happen) opened in the same.

All in all nice one

Chardee MacDennis

speed seemed fine to me tbh. its a ver nice design. there are a few elements missing imo:
1. an actual home page would be nice, not just landing on the gigs page (this page should be linked via the logo)
2. a contact page
3. i would get rid of the top div

00sully

GAAman wrote: »

One thing though for whatever reason when i clicked the music button it opened in a new tab but every other button (including music again after that to see if it would happen) opened in the same.

Nice one GAAman, I'm not too worried about this behaviour - it is using a jquery plugin to perform the tab switch. I obtained that from here - http://www.hieu.co.uk/blog/index.php/tabswitch/ - and i think it's a little buggy (check what happens when you click the tabs really fast!!) so I will probably disregard this or write my own one.

cheers

00sully

BastardPrince wrote: »

there are a few elements missing imo:
1. an actual home page would be nice, not just landing on the gigs page (this page should be linked via the logo)
2. a contact page
3. i would get rid of the top div

yeah of course I will have a home and contact page when I get the content to display.

on point 3, I don't know. I will prob add some more design elements to the buildings in the top div - and probably more relevant material at that. It gives it a nice pad I think. This is subjective I think! I suppose it is relevant to peoples screen resolution - it may cause the page to scroll on lower res screens. I will ponder this with client!

thanks for comments

Eoin

It was a little slow for me, which meant that the main text was not very readable until the background image loaded.

A user-friendly way to get around this is to set the background colour of that area to one that is close to the main colour of the background image, so this is the colour that's displayed until the background image is fully loaded.

00sully

nice one Eoin - thanks - I should have spotted that one!

S.M.B.

It was slow enough loading for me too.

The overall design seems nice but it's hard to properly judge it until all the relevant content is there to view.

p

Overall it's a decent design. Here's a few things I think could improve it, or you should bear in mind in future project.

- Use content that is closer to real content. What the text says, and how it's layed out is an imported part of the design.
- Make the homepage different. It's easy to one template and just drop text in as needed, but different pages should be custom designed, especially the homepage which is th first chance you have to make an impression.
- Overall, the typography needs to be improved. They're clichéd fonts, and the all the fonts are trying to grab your attention, so none of them. Try to define a hierarchy of elements on the page.
- The musical symbol is a completely different style to everything else.
- The best thing about the style is the drawing in the background. It's the most original. I'd suggest building on that and trying to do hand lettering in the logo & navigation.

Take a look at this site and see how they've done some things.
http://www.davebarnes.com/
http://www.fivecentstand.com/

Overall though, nice site. Look forward to seeing it live with full content in it!

Chardee MacDennis

00sully wrote: »

yeah of course I will have a home and contact page when I get the content to display.

on point 3, I don't know. I will prob add some more design elements to the buildings in the top div - and probably more relevant material at that. It gives it a nice pad I think. This is subjective I think! I suppose it is relevant to peoples screen resolution - it may cause the page to scroll on lower res screens. I will ponder this with client!

thanks for comments

well i have to scroll down at the moment on a 1280 * 800 monitor, it annoyed me a bit as it seemed unnecessary!

mahamageehad

The last poster was right the scrolling down is ridiculous, no offense, its simply unnecessary and annoying because it doesn't actually give you any extra information.

On the plus side I like the layout, it will really appeal to its target audience. The rollover effects are nice as well.

As has been mentioned previously it would be more beneficial to see the site with the content added.

All in all, well done!

DonkeyStyle \o/

I think what'd be nice is to give the in-set images some kind of weathered edge treatment... at the moment their hard edges are 'popping' a bit too much against the rest of the site.
Worth a look anyway.

Cool design though, well done.

00sully

excellent p, thanks - I'm still relatively novice at the design part of web sites. I don't particularly dig those links though - especially barnes since it seems very disjointed. yes the overall flash design is nice but the links bring you to several different designed portals/contact pages etc... also flash is a no go at this stage for me - I have flash block installed! The 2nd one seems to busy. I see what you are getting at though.

I will differntiate pages when I have the content. I don't want to put much more effort into it until I have the content and can correctly plan the overall layout. It is kind of a mish mash of ideas at the moment alright.

I will have to look at that scroll nastiness - would bug the hell out of me too!

S.M.B.

p wrote: »

- The musical symbol is a completely different style to everything else.

Yeah, I didn't mention this as I thought it would seem to be a bit too nit-picky but the treble clef really seems at odds with the whole 'grunge' look you're going for.

00sully

yep right about that cleff - that was part of my mish mash mentioned above. gone. I've changed the links now too, P, I get what you were saying. The font now is more in line with the rest of the deisgn now.

I still have to work on that logo :-/ not my forte! think it will end up being hand drawn on a tablet. its horrible at the moment and rushed.

still some scrolling in res where y<=800 - 'I'm choppin of all she's got cap'an!' I'll have to chop of some more of the top maybe.

I'll come back for critique again when I have the content complete. All comments on board n' very useful.

thanks again guys

p

Looks better. There's a more coherant feel overall, and I like that you've stripped back some elements too.

Quick question for you. Did you draw the picture in the background, the sketch of the house scene? If so, then I think you should put the extra effort into doing hand lettering for all the main nav links (even if you trace an existing font) and also for the icons too. Custom drawn things also looks much nicer, especially for this type of style.

Also, on another note, it might be best to get a stock image of the paper from istockphoto or somewhere like that. It's very hard to fake the edge of a real torn piece of paper, and istock has loads of cheap photos that are a great starting point.

00sully

No I didn't draw it - I have a set of urban style ps brushes that contained most of the elements in that sketch. Can't claim credit for that one - wish I could!

Still, I know what you mean about the links too - I'll try to trace the current font if/when I get the tablet for the main logo to see how it will look.

I thought the worn paper turned out ok. I wasn't attempting a lifelike re-creation for everything! found this one tho http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1139972 :pac:

p

00sully wrote: »

No I didn't draw it - I have a set of urban style ps brushes that contained most of the elements in that sketch. Can't claim credit for that one - wish I could!

I know what you man. I'm not great at drawing either.

I thought the worn paper turned out ok. I wasn't attempting a lifelike re-creation for everything! found this one tho http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1139972 :pac:

It turned out pretty well, but I think a solid piece of paper with real edges will always beat someone trying to create fake rough edges.

I think the site is pretty good at the moment, so my suggestions are really about taking it to the next level if you have the time & inclination.