Cultural Village Mockup

Hi Latoya,

I rili like this design - clean and simple. Are the images on the page static or are they going to be a slideshow ? I'd only like the font color of the date in the 'From the blog' to be made lighter. The current color being too close to the background color is a little hard to read. Same for the copyright info also. Other than that it's perfect for me. Nice one :)

this looks like a really good first draft. i like the top two thirds of the layout, if it is a bit on the simple side. the big problem i see is with the footer. it's packed with elements that don't normally appear shoved into a footer. Also, it is in stark contrast to the simplicity of the top two thirds of the layout, which i like the more i look at it. the footer is just cluttered. the "contact us" form can go since you have a contact us tab in the main menu. anyone looking to contact you will find that page. "featured products" can stay on the home page, but does not belong in a footer. normally, i'd suggest right side floating column for such, but that wouldn't fit with the simplistic nature of the centered images. "from the blog" gets a similar analysis to the "featured products".

sorry if this is a little hard to parse ... you have a fundamental conflict between the simplicity of the top two thirds and the cluttered nature of the bottom third that needs to be sorted.

closing thought: the menu needs to be reordered. most importantly, "shop" needs to be second only to "home", unless i am misunderstanding the point of this site. "about" is typically the last item in such menus. it shows that you're hosting the site for the visitors, not to show off yourself or your project. you should also flip "travel" and "contact", for similar reasons as moving "about" to last. i would also, highlight "upcoming events", as you want to grab visitors attention to it and get them to go to the events.

hope that didn't come off as overly negative ... in general, i think you have a very promising start.

It looks nice, very clean and balanced. Photos are good too, although I'm not sure if the one to the right is cropped well - the guy's head looks a little bit strange, like stuck in the corner. I think that you could make the text larger (menu items and base font), and increase line height - it will make the block of text easier to read. And maybe I would try adding one more color somewhere, to add contrast. In the title? I'm not sure.