5 Reviews4 Votes2 Favorites552 Views
Concept Reviews
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I like it a lot! Just viewed the preview picture of this concept through RSS and realized in seconds what you are doing. Everything above the welcome text is nearly perfect imho. Perhaps a little structure on the black background or some highlighting effects could make it more interesting.
The bottom line is the centered text. This is always hard to read, no exception here. I would put these paragraphs in 2-4 columns, left aligned.
The call to action buttons seem to have a too dark shadow, try to lighten them up a bit.
The following rows are looking good, perhaps also a bit of structure for the background.
Nice job, you are on the way! I am looking forward to the inner pages.
Notes Added to Images View
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1Alignment
Hard to read, try a grid.
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2too dark
Shadwos are a bit too dark
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3structure/highlighting
I would increae the highlight effect or put some structure on the black background.
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4darkness
.... imprisoning me (Metallica, you know ;-)). It is getting very dark down here, perhaps try some other colors.
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Hi Chris, I love this design. A couple of points, like M.H said, is to make the header and the footer a little lighter. Or maybe have a light effect/glow in the center of the header and footer. What I would like is a gradual darkening of the colors towards the end of the page.
Also, the shadows under 'See our work' and 'Learn More' make the buttons look as if they are abruptly chopped off. The shadows can be made a little lighter and more spread out.
Maybe it's just me but I did not like the blue text on black background (the twitter, writer footer area). Could be made the same yellow/cream of the date.
On the whole this design is beautiful and soothing. "The Who, The What, The Wow, The Talk" - couldn't get any simpler. I like it, I like it :)
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Chris Ramaglia commented:Namratha- We appreciate your positive review and we've modified the footer based on your comment as well as the CTA buttons. We're considering alternatives on the blue text and I'm glad you liked the naming conventions for the nav, we wanted something different and light so that's good that it worked. Thank you again for taking the time to comment on our work.
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two quick thoughts:
1) the 5 examples you have as the main graphic all appear to be from the same site, but that took looking at them closely to determine. it may be better to choose vastly different sites to show off so that it doesn't give the appearance that all of your designs for clients look the same.
2) due to the shadow extending bellow them, the "see our work" and "learn more" buttons look like they're about to fall over. shadows tend to do better when only behind the elements they're meant to accent.
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Chris Ramaglia commented:
Rick- Great points, we were concerned about the screens we selected too, they're all from one client (one of our largest and most well-known regionally) and showcase several different sites we built for them so your comment makes sense. We're going to re-consider how we treat this, we like the design but the specific screens will need to be finalized.
Pretty much every reviewer has mentioned the buttons as well and we've changed them as a result, we really appreciate you taking the time to critique our work.
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Great layout and totally excellent typographical choices. Clean and clear, as what a homepage should be.
Only thing I'd really like to change is the text alignment of the footer links (the keywords in the very bottom panel next to the newsletter signup). Left aligning them would be easier to scan. In addition, besides your main content area for the homepage, I assume everything else including the inner pages would be left aligned.
Other minor and totally non-critical stuff:
- Screenshots (ok, somewhat critical): kind of comes across as very "templatish"
- Footer logo: full color and looks the same size as the main site logo, could "down" it a little (smaller or 2 tone)
- Repeated navigation at the bottom: I get what you're trying to do here for ease of use, but when you scroll to the bottom, it may seem like the header is repeating itself again. Could be less similar to the top nav, or less prominent.
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Chris Ramaglia commented:
Mark- Thanks for the kind words, the type was a huge brainstorming point for us and I'm glad to hear you liked our choice (Georgia). We've re-aligned the footer links based on your comment and they look much better, thanks for that. I addressed the screenshots in my reply to another review, thanks for your honesty there because that's the only graphical element on this entire page so it's imperative we get it right.
We also changed up the nav in the footer based on what you wrote, that was a great catch. Thanks again for writing all this up, it really helped us out.
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Mark Ong commented:Hi Chris,
Any chance of posting a screenshot revision? Would really love to see how the final site pans out. Loads of potential, that's for sure!
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Hi Chris -- fellow "Jacksonvillian" here. (We're practically neighbors.) As someone who has visited your site many times over the years, (and someone who's worked with some of the same clients as DT), I can say that this is a huge improvement from previous site versions, including the current one. It's cleaner, a lot more buttoned up, and just feels more sturdy. It has the look-n-feel of an established, trusted provider. (As opposed to those webshop sites that scream "off-shore"/churn-n-burn. Know what I mean?)
The new design does have somewhat of a "trendy" vibe to it (similar to something you might find for sale on Themeforest), but a lot of providers are going that route, so I don't think it's that big of a deal. And even if it was a theme, it's still a big improvement.
It looks like you've already gotten a lot of great feedback, so I don't have much else to add -- though I'll second the motion to re-evaluate some of the text treatments in order to improve readability. (Blue on black = tough to see. Light gray on just about everything = eye strain.)
Looking forward to seeing how this turns out for your guys. And hey -- if you need subjects for usability testing, I'm literally 5 minutes away!
-Tom
M.H.- Thank you for the detailed review, we thought the centered text was a risk but wanted to give it a shot because we felt it naturally drove the user down the page to the CTA buttons/rich updated content. This will be something we scrutinize moving forward depending on further feedback.
We agreed on the buttons and have since changed them up a little as well as played with the background texture. We'll definitely be posting the inner pages when we have them ready and I hope you'll offer some more comments, thanks again, we really appreciate it.