Harish Chouhan

Website Design for DreamsMedia.in

By Harish Chouhan

   on Aug 05, 2010
8 Reviews3 Votes1 Favorite448 Views

Concept Reviews

  • Robert Sullivan

    Robert Sullivan

    Rank: 1 Elite

    273

    • Design: 2
    • Purpose: 2
    • Originality: 2
    • Engagement: 4
    2 Votes
    This review has been awarded.
    Compartmentalization

    Posted on Aug 05, 2010 at 1:10 PM

    Main nav should be top horizontal. Your Home page looks more like a sub page than home page. I would shrink top header area (to bring more above the fold) Reconcile page names to menu names. For example, you have 'COMPANY' in nav, but the resolving page has the header "About Us". This could be construed as confusing for older audience segment. Consider closing the gap between header/sub header area text and first paragraph. They seem too far away from each other. awesome logo! Lovely design Calls to action should be in a third color (and reserved only for main calls to action). On Home page, you have nice separation between "See Out Work" and "Contact us" buttons (CTA's), but I would consider treating them with a differ color. Right now the "Some of our Clients" rotating banners steal my attention from who you are, what you do, etc. Maybe go a little darker on body font color. #333333? Just the same. A very nice design

    • Harish Chouhan
      Harish Chouhan commented:
      Posted: on Aug 05, 2010 at 10:10 PM

      Thanks Robert.

      • Thanks for pointing out the inconsistencies in the naming. Shall work on it right away.
      • I too had planned for the top horizontal nav, not exactly sure how I ended up with left nav. but I would be doing this change in updates, as that would save space and allow me to more content for the main section.
      • I would not prefer dark grey for call to action, but do you think Orange from my logo would do any good?
  • Kurt Farrar

    Kurt Farrar

    Rank: 2 Titan

    693

    • Design: 5
    • Purpose: 4
    • Originality: 3
    • Engagement: 4
    1 Vote
    This review has been awarded.
    Palace/building

    Posted on Aug 07, 2010 at 8:48 AM

    I really like the design, I agree with Luke's comments re: illustrator, I think you've done a fantastic job here.

    The design seems straight to the point, gives information clearly and concisely. As others have said, the navigation is easy to use, albeit a little small (perhaps increase the font size a little here).

    I particularly LIKE the clouds in the header and footer. Has a Hotmail/Windows Live feel.

    I like the social network links, as part of the footer, and the javascript rotator is well implemented.

    The only thing that didn't seem to sit right for me was the palace. It looks like it doesn't belong there. Partially because it looks like it's cut from something else, and therefore the edges to the palace look too dark for the surrounding clouds, but also because I can't think of a good reason why the palace in the clouds? Is it supposed to refer to some heavenly place?!? I don't get it. :o| I think the design would be spot on without this, without putting anything in it's place.

    Hope my feedback is helpful,

    Kurt

    • Harish Chouhan
      Harish Chouhan commented:
      Posted: on Aug 08, 2010 at 2:52 AM

      Hi Kurt appreciate your comments.

      I was earlier working on sketching the image (which of of gateway of India, located in the city of Mumbai, India from where I operate.) However the sketch did not look good enough so I used a image and tried to modify with whatever I was capable of. And ended up with it. Since I had delayed my own site work from last 2 years, thought to just get some decent up and running soon.

      However, in few weeks would be working on the updated, and implementing few changed like the once you said and also which points that I got from above feedbacks from other users.

      Thanks again.

  • Luke Marohn

    Luke Marohn

    Rank: 1 Elite

    5069

    • Design: 4
    • Purpose: 4
    • Originality: 4
    • Engagement: 4
    1 Vote
    This review has been awarded.
    Wow

    Posted on Aug 05, 2010 at 12:30 PM

    Harish,

    This is a pretty awesome site! I wanted to make sure you knew that before i went into my review XD

    Here is what i think you should change/remove/add 1. The sun at the top of the page, i see three red circles.. Lens flare? if they are, then it doesnt look like it. I would just use the Lens Flare Filter in photoshop. Now I'm going to assume that you dont know how and tell you XD.

    ( 1 ) new layer ( 2 ) Shift+backspace fill with 50% grey ( 3 ) lense flare filter ( 4 ) Set blend mode to hard light.

    Other than that, your site is REALLY cool, make sure you make it as interactive as you can, (hovers/fades ect)

    1. I DO see a weird space below the intro. to the left of See our work.
    2. and contact us button seems to be floating a little too far to the right.
    3. The building could use a little work. try tinting it a more blue color.
    4. make the bottom clouds have the same blue color.

    Good luck!

    • Luke Marohn
      Luke Marohn commented:
      Posted: on Aug 05, 2010 at 12:39 PM

      Also, you dont need to be an illustrator to have a nice website, I dont know why others are pointing that out :P Your clouds seem fine to me?

    • Harish Chouhan
      Harish Chouhan commented:
      Posted: on Aug 05, 2010 at 10:06 PM

      Thanks Luke, appreciate it.

      Those are not actually lens flare. They are line art from my logo.

      1. The buttons are all right aligned to my 960 wide layout. And the layout is left aligned. Since am not using justify option for my text alignment, the buttons look to be on right. If you compare the site on grid, you would see its perfectly aligned on one.

      2. Shall do this. I too think it would look good. Or would use what Namratha suggested above, by having a full width footer.

  • Ashok Suthar

    Ashok Suthar

    Rank: 3 Superior

    90

    • Design: 4
    • Purpose: 4
    • Originality: 3
    • Engagement: 3
    0 Votes
    Cool Design

    Posted on Aug 27, 2010 at 8:26 AM

    Hi, I like the layout very clean and cool concept.

  • Nick Glavin

    Nick Glavin

    Rank: 2 Titan

    CF Verified professional

    980

    • Design: 3
    • Purpose: 2
    • Originality: 3
    • Engagement: 1
    0 Votes
    Positional Statement

    Posted on Aug 05, 2010 at 7:27 PM

    Hi, you have created a nice soothing peaceful design.

    I feel your positional statement lacks design impact to captivate user engagement. functional, yes usable, yes but truly jumping off the page and saying what enticing user action, no.

    I guess this comes back to falling on trends large text certainly helps make that statement and i think in this case it will work as the page is not particularly content heavy.

    • Look at reworking (namaste section)

    if you don't want to change that heaps the leading is either to great for that heading size or the heading needs more padding on the bottom at the moment it flows to easily there is no tension there so to speak. I mean what is a world with out a little chaos :D

    oh just noticed big type no no on the last line you got a widow or an orphan can never remember but i believe it is the latter.

    • Fix leading on body or adjust to heading padding
    • never have a paragraph end with a single word on its own line

    your column split looks a bit awkward in the lower section your divider is shorter than your image and as such weights that column heavily to the right.

    maybe look at using the good old golden mean for that column split and it might balance it up a little

    • Column 1 divider not right length
    • Review Column widths

    Footer is also not balanced the logo mark doesn't really need to be there does it ? it breaks branding as well and took me a while to work out what it was.

    also the footer does not look balanced it is very left aligned

    • Remove Logo Mark from footer
    • Extended footer to full with of column

    Finally your nav is just hanging out i would bring closer to logo and align with the top of heading

    • Align Nav with top of H1
    • Look at using a vertical grid as well as a horizontal one

    Good Luck

    • Nick Glavin
      Nick Glavin commented:
      Posted: on Aug 05, 2010 at 7:52 PM

      after looking at your site still has scroll on 1200px height :D u using a new mac? might adjust to 1200px height as there is nothing after the fold any way

    • Harish Chouhan
      Harish Chouhan commented:
      Posted: on Aug 05, 2010 at 10:20 PM

      Hello Nick, Appreciate the detailed comment.

      I actually was trying to use vertical grid too, but then gave up after messing with the fonts. I have not use vertical grid for 2 reasons, am using a Custom font using @fontface. the closet default to this is Verdana. Both are similar but also very different. The sizes are kept to keep their font size in check even if my custom font does not load.

      Am aligning the nav to my second heading below the H1. I tried the what you said, and that made the logo and nav too close hence decided for the current setup.

      The logo mark on footer might be on wrong place. But the reason for it is, that every site I make, I place the mark in the footer of the website. Now you may call this, thinking too much in the future, but I want it to be remembered.

      Another important issue is about what you mentioned as trend. Using large text is used miss-used by many without knowing the reason for the same. I ask my clients, and leads about whether they had read the contents of my full page, and 90% never did.

      The large text sub heading groups is developed by some experts earlier to address this issue. If like a "excerpt" we could have the main details with keywords in the heading and sub heading, users who don't read would still have idea about the page.

      I am seriously going to work on the points regarding the advise you have given me on the text padding and spacing and also the footer divide. Will try some options based on your comments and some others I have received.

  • Vaibhav Shete

    Vaibhav Shete

    Rank: 10 Newbie

    9

    • Design: 2
    • Purpose: 1
    • Originality: 1
    • Engagement: 1
    0 Votes
    Draft

    Posted on Aug 05, 2010 at 7:40 AM

    The design is simple compare to the concept envisioned. Needed indepth graphical views so that to attract attention of the viewer and hold them on site

    • Harish Chouhan
      Harish Chouhan commented:
      Posted: on Aug 05, 2010 at 8:04 AM

      Hello Vaibhav, thanks for the comment.

      I haven't gone for any detailed graphics website, based on my analytical study.

      I must admit am not a pro in illustrations and hence thought to keep it simple and straight to the point, since I have seen companies after reading so much yet fill the site with information and so many links, that it becomes a work in itself to get to what we want to find.

      So I choose a simple grid based design.

      I still appreciate ur comments and point of view.

  • Melisa

    Melisa

    Rank: 2 Titan

    80

    • Design: 2
    • Purpose: 5
    • Originality: 2
    • Engagement: 2
    0 Votes
    Draft

    Posted on Aug 05, 2010 at 12:10 PM

    Hello,

    What I like about your site most is that it's so easy to navigate. So I believe you have achieved your main objective.

    However, I think there's still room of improvement especially on the illustration bits. You might want to check this tutorial out. It has similar header as yours but at night. http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/interface-tutorials/create-a-magic-night-themed-web-design-from-scratch-in-photoshop/

    Hope it will help you. Cheers.

    • Harish Chouhan
      Harish Chouhan commented:
      Posted: on Aug 05, 2010 at 9:50 PM

      Hello Melisa, Thanks for your comments, but again I fail to understand the point on illustration. There is a different between the words a "designer" & a "artist". With web the words are getting interchanged due to some exception artists with knowledge of web technologies.

      A Designers job is to create solutions for business problems and not art pieces. So if with a minimum things you can achieve it, that should be the object. Am sure not everyone will agree, but I believe in this thought.

    • Harish Chouhan
      Harish Chouhan commented:
      Posted: on Aug 05, 2010 at 10:06 PM

      Please look at these website http://www.cabedge.com/ & http://simplebits.com/ as these are my inspirations.

  • Namratha Prabhu

    Namratha Prabhu

    Rank: 3 Superior

    535

    • Design: 2
    • Purpose: 2
    • Originality: 2
    • Engagement: 2
    0 Votes
    Space, footer, button highighting

    Posted on Aug 05, 2010 at 12:23 PM

    Hi Harish,

    I went thru' your site (on firefox/epic). A couple of points - 1. The header image does not look to be centered - it is a little towards the right. This has to be centered. 2. On the home page, isn't it better to have "See our work" get more emphasis than "Contact us"? If so then the former should be made blue and the latter in white. 3. There seems to be a lot of empty space on the right side of the page. Do you plan to have something added here later (navigation items, ads, etc)? If not, the space can be reduced. 4. The footer feels like the continuation of the page. Would be better if it is made separate from the main content. 5. The tooltip for "brand identities" on home page shows "brand idenity design" - the spelling of 'identity' is wrongly spelt. 6. One last observation, the Home label on home page is not highlighted as current page whereas all other links are highlighted in their corresponding pages.

    A very simple website but can be much better. Would suggest using some color (the solid colors used in the logo are nice) and keep a consistency in all the page (like for ex., in all the pages other than News, the buttons are made blue and they have a link. In News page the date is made to look like a button but doesn't have a link). Just my thoughts. Hope you found this helpful. :)

    • Luke Marohn
      Luke Marohn commented:
      Posted: on Aug 05, 2010 at 12:49 PM

      I'm glad you went through the Live Site i as completly forgot. >.< Just a sidenote to Harish: Make those links "brand identities" "web apps" Have those Change to your Orange in your logo when hovered. :P

    • Harish Chouhan
      Harish Chouhan commented:
      Posted: on Aug 05, 2010 at 10:02 PM

      Thanks Namratha,

      Let me state the reasons for some decisions:

      1. My Site is designed around 960 GRID. The width of the main contents is on that Grid. Secondly the website is left aligned. The position of the header background is based on this. Secondly the position of the "Mumbai Gateway Image" is on the right of my layout and not in centre of screen"

      1. From last 6 years of analytical data, I had found that among the people who filled my contact forms, the average for every 1 month is that always more than 60% (except financial year end & vacations) people went from my Home Page to Contact Us page. So the call to action button on Home page is "Contact Us" and hence thats in blue.

      3. The reason is same as the 1st reason stated. Its based on 960 GRID. You might feel empty space on the right since my website is left aligned. But its useless to make a website full with content if we don't have data of how many people read it.

      4. Footer I agree, due to my decisions it does not give a sharp end to the website. Honestly am not sure, the exact reasons for their positions. So shall work on it in when updating the site again.

      5. Thanks. Shall correct it immediately.

      6. Need to find a way in WordPress to get the home page marked. Since am using a new nav menu feature in WordPress, the home page is not getting marked with a CSS automatically.