my site index page

pwd

peterdungan.net

my site
only the index page is up.
rest should be up tomorrow.
content a bit dumb but what do you put on an index page like.
using ssi so I can include sidebar navbar footer in all pages apart from index (all that is set up the index page is an shtml and html page glued together).
xhtml and css is valid.
looks like I want in firefox and ie
if no javascript for the dd menus and links will be there instead.

very important it gets at least an 'a' for accessibility
which I think it does get at the moment.
need to change to ems instead of pixels to get better than that which i might do at some stage.
design kept simple to make it easier to conform to the w3c standards (is more important that it does than that it has fancy design/features for what i want to do next)
any suggestions/opinions etc

Figment

Cinergi logo animation looks familiar

First impression is a bad one i am afraid. The design looks amateurish which would be somewhat ok if you were just advertising your programming but reflects realy bad if you are selling design as well.
'Logo' looks like a bad version of the London tube.

Lose, or tone down the red. Or ad some other complementary colours to make it less stark.

If you are looking to keep the design simple that's fine but you can have simple and nice at the same time. Have a look at the sites below to see how others are doing it and then i would suggest starting again.

Sorry to seem harsh, but the i just don't see any 'design' there worth keeping.

http://www.cssbeauty.com/
http://www.stylegala.com/

pwd

heard somewhere red white black was supposed to be very effective combination psychologically.
I might take out the reference to web design actually,,, I don't really see myself going in that direction...the interest I have in it is from developing a tool to make sites accessible. Hence the requirement that the site meets standards. Was focussing more on keeping a shallow structure and conforming to standards than on the design itself.
Wasn't happy with the logo when i did it, and did it fairly quick. Don;t have anything else to put there. The original design of the site was like it is on the grpahics page (only without the menus off in the middle of nowhere obviously.) Originally had no colour at all, but that wasn't great either Tried balancing the red at the top by putting a red stripe at the bottom but that looked crap.
Part of my problem is that I don't have all that much to put on the index page in the first place.

dangerman

If you don't have anything else to put there; take out that logo, it undermines the site as it looks amateur. The boxed content could be made a light grey #E2E2E2 say, and then just move the red off to say #C60000. A third colour for the logo would add emphasis. Then you won't get the harshness of the full-red and bright white.

The importance you place on standards shouldn't undermine your design and I think it's an error to take that issue as your number one start off point - it is important - but aesthetics & usability are also important.

When I first view your site, the things that immediately grab my attention are the W3C buttons - because they're the most obvious visually interesting things on the page. I know you want to draw attention to the fact that the site is validated etc. but I'd consider changing those buttons to text. It wouldn't be such a problem if you had other elements to focus the eye but as it stands they are the most interesting thing on the homepage. I would work on the logo - maybe something simple; just your name but in a nice bold font and a complementary colour. Clean and minimalist.

good luck with it.

cregser

Hi, I just recently completed a module on Web Usability in my course. It was a real eye-opener to the need for w3c standards - especially when we were given a lecture from a blind guy. For your line of work (or work you hope to get), the w3c issues are important, but I agree somewhat with dangerman that they catch the reader's attention too much. Either place them lower or use the smaller versions of the logos. I understand that you do want them noticable.

I intend to create a site the way you have soon enough - but I don't know if/when I want to enter the job market!

I like the minimilistic design but the content is too minimilistic. The content on your index page is yours to come up with, but one tip: it should advertise you straight away rather than saying "Hi thanks for coming..etc,etc". Leave that to a promentant single sentenced welcome blog. Look at other similar sites for ideas.

Another thing - if you're using the ready-made javascript menu that I think you are, then it doesn't say alot about your programming skills. Maybe try modifying it???

Good luck anyway, I like the logo despite what others are saying. However, use another program that allows you to draw better circles! It's very aliased. I would recommend GIMP because it's free.

pwd

javascript isn't one of my programming skills though, no point reinventing the wheel
The logo was done in flash because i thought it would be handy to able to scale it up and down easily, and because it's the graphical tool I'm most comfortable with. Can see what you mean about the aliasing. Looks a little better in firefox, just becasue of the positioning, than IE where it is a little high.
Going to play about with colour schemes and try to find something better. Reading up about the colour wheel and things at the mo. going to change the logo or replace it with text...have an image I started drawing that could be decent but that will take a while so I want something temporary. Definitely going to change those w3c buttons alright. Might change the design of the page quite a bit.
Content is dumb alright. Maybe I'll list my skill set (not that that would take up much room lol!) and sort of introduce myself on the index page. The site is pretty much an expanded cv like. my cv is better designed than it is come to think of it.
Thanks for responses feedback all very helpful so far.

pwd

new version up now.
Using the colours suggested by dangerman, as well as a pastel green-yellow instead of white in places.
Replaced the logo with text (that appears higher than I want in ie right now.
Replaced two of the W3c icons with text links. The accecssiblility one requires "Level A conformance to Web Accessibility guidelines 1.0" which is difficult to fit in neatly without making the text teeny so the page no longer meets level A criteria for accessibilty. I left the icon for that one. It does not look quite so out of place with the slightly more interesting colour scheme.
Going to change the positioning of the content within the sidebar, and obviously make the logo appear more central in the top for ie. Will probably change the colours of the logo text too unless I replace it right away.
what do you think of this one?

dangerman

ok cool its certainly an improvement - the colours seperate the elements well without being too harsh on the eye.

I'd get rid of the big 'Welcome' - it looks like the page is called 'Welcome' ...if you get rid of that, the whole top nav bar should be thinner, which imo would be better.

The .net of peterdungan is hard to read, that blue text will never sit well on top of that red. try using the same grey as the left menu column?

I'd put text in saying WCAG1A-Conformance - those that no what that is will be impressed, everyone else won't care. I wouldn't have double spacing between the lines for the 3 compliance links - they're all related so they should be bunched together.

After the 'I am currently based in Rathgar in Dublin, Ireland.' line there is a lot of blank space - any reason? Maybe just get rid of that push it all up a bit tighter - maybe - try it, see how it looks.

Remember, this is all quite picky stuff, but I think with such a simple design it's stuff like this which will make quite a difference.

Keep at it!

cregser

Some quick comments.

I think you took a few steps forward and some back too.

I think it looks boring without any graphics. You excpect the vistor to sit down and read through your text. The most you can expect of any web user is to skim through your text. Some headings or empasised text will make it easier to read. I would work on the the "Welcome" blog and make it more pithy (a word I learned in my course module!). And maybe put it below the menu. Put something like contact details above the menu to the right.

I'm being picky too.

pwd

I redesigned it totally now. Much simpler lighter design that I think works a lot better.
What do you think?
It uses an elastic layout so if you increase text size, the layout stretches proportionately.

kjt

I didnt see the first one... but this looks extremely basic tbh

cgarvey

Sorry Peter, I'm with kjt on this.. It looks like a <layer> positioning tutorial from the days of Netscape 4.. it doesn't convey any ability or professionalism to me at all. You need graphical content to spice it up.. coloured boxes just don't cut it these days. Seeing "Interface design" on that page (as it stands) discredits you completely, in my book anyway. .. Simple steps like adding soft borders to the boxes would go a long way, but as it stands, this is something I'd expect to see after a beginners (x)HTML course in secondary school.. If you are creative use it.. learn from things you like in other sites... if the site is a simple layout, then it's easy to make it compliant to the standards you want to.

BizzyC

I agree. It looks extremely basic, and the fact that you have "Graphic Design" as a heading on such an amateurish design completely undermines your credibility.
Your own website should set a standard that customers would like their site to reach.
First impressions go a long way.

pwd

Changed it a bit. What do you think now?

probably will change graphic design to "flash illustration" or something
maybe combine the two panels listing projects etc into one, with one entry for all design etc, and replace the other pnale with an illustration.

BizzyC

Does make a difference. The border makes it look a little more profound.

pwd

changed it to one text and two image panels now.

if anyone looks ta it on a mac could they let me know if it displays properly please?

kjt

Humm it looks a bit better, but its still fairly bland. Looks like you just added a bigger layer in the very back.

+ what do you mean by 'flash illustration' ?

pwd

flash illustration: drawing things in macromedia flash. because it's vector-based there are a couple of considerations that are different to bitmap illustration; like optimising the image by minimising the number of lines.

should have a cirle and a couple of images as well as the back layer if it's displaying properly.
Not sure what else to do, apart from maybe livening up the background a bit, and perhaps doing something with the title.

kjt

Will they be purely jpgs when your finished ? or are these going to be animated?

If their animated I'd advise having some type of a flash site. Thats what I'm hoping to do once I get the time... but even now that its a "Comming soon" page I still have flash My Site

K!LL!@N

What exactly are you trying to achieve with this page?
If you're trying to show off any skills you might have, you're failing miserably.

You mention illustration and design as projects of yours, but this page doesn't show off any real design skills.
I looks like an amateur attempt.

You also mention validation and you even have links to validate the page.
That would be great, if the page actually validated, which it doesn't.

I hope it doesn't seem like i'm being nasty but you really need to have a rethink about your page.

Killian

pwd

more attempts at deblandifying done.
i know it doesn't validate right now--will make sure it does when I have settled on a design.
Flash site not a good idea in my case. I am making an accessibility tool for html. Therefore my site should be in accessible html.
kjt: your flash looks nice. It took a little while to load for me though so at first it seemed like it was just displaying a blank grey page.
not much animation on my site. a few jpgs, an interactive map, one or two logo animations.

kjt

Soz, didnt think it took a while to load :S

Like the way your adding more colour and pictures to the page, BUT I think what most people here are saying is that you should go try venture further with the overall design. As in A different concept and not just the 3 frames ?

EDIT:: Stupid question was asked here..

K!LL!@N

I'm sorry to say but i think you're making it worse instead of better.
Tells us what you're aiming for with the site and maybe we can give you ideas.

Killian

pwd

A few pages outlining development projects I worked on; my cv; a site map; some pics I drew, an interactive flash map.The listed items will all be links to pages on them.

There isn't much content because I don't have all that much to put in it. Adding text for the sake of it isn't good. The older version had accessible drop down menus, but they are pointless in such a small site I think, and just add to the loading time.
Loads of white space isn;t goiod either.

pwd

another version up now. looks a lot better to my highly subjective eye.
might remove the circle in the background. What do you think?
Thanks for your help so far

BizzyC

Not sure about the cartoons.
Doesn't really scream professional developer to me. A company who wants their site done properly don't want a cartoonist, you should keep that to a seperate page for people looking for that kind of thing.

K!LL!@N

Is this a piss take?

The page is getting progressively worse.
I'd recommend you ditch the current design you have.
Don't add anything more to it, just bin it.
Start from scratch.
You couldn't show that to someone and expect them to hire you.

I can't even give you any words of encouragement for the current design.
It has no redeeming features, that i can see.

Killian

Keyzer

K!LL!@N wrote:

Is this a piss take?

The page is getting progressively worse.
I'd recommend you ditch the current design you have.
Don't add anything more to it, just bin it.
Start from scratch.
You couldn't show that to someone and expect them to hire you.

I can't even give you any words of encouragement for the current design.
It has no redeeming features, that i can see.

Killian

I agree, the current site design would be more appropriate for a childrens television program's website....

pwd

i quite like the design at the mo; although I agree with BizzyC and Keyzer that it isn't appropriate.
Like BizzyC suggests, I think I'll make a subdomain for graphics stuff I've done and use a design like that.