• Ben Gillbanks

    Ben Gillbanks

    Rank: 2 Titan

    2066

    • Design: 4
    • Purpose: 3
    • Originality: 3
    • Engagement: 4
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    Posted on Sep 01, 2010 at 11:32 AM

    Loving the clean cool colours and the typography. The whitespace also works really well - nice and readable.

    I do have a couple of pointers for you though.

    It looks like there is a different grid in each section of the page. I guess there could be a grid that is 32 columns or something like that, but then it's not really visible since you don't use it.

    For instance I would make the renovations text in the footer line up with the central column of text in the main content area.

    Also the spacing in the columns in the third section seem to vary. This is the space beween the the image, the renovations column, the insurance made easy column, and the contact us space.

    Just been through the other images and I see that the spacing is a lot better on the other designs. I think trimwebaltaltfull.png has the best layout but miss the big hammer image that was in the first image - I thought that was quite striking and unique (I like the way it overlaid different areas of content).

    The contact us online button in the left hand column looks a bit sloppy. Everything else is lovely and crisp but the drop shadows etc on there seem to make things look a bit blurry and indistinct. I would swap the dark shadows for white ones to give the button a beveled feel, which would also improve contrast (readability) and make things feel sharper again.

    • Glen Mcrae
      Glen Mcrae commented:
      Posted: on Sep 01, 2010 at 9:27 PM

      Thank you so much for that feedback. The page is just using a simple 4 column grid. One of the issues I constantly seem to face when designing with grids is that the gutters never seen wide enough when using the classical swiss style of constructing a grid (for print) on the web, where the gutter width is the height of the main body copy leading. It never seems to be quite enough and I often feel the content gets bunched up a bit.

      I probably need to relax the rigid thinking I brought with me from doing grid designs in print and let things breath a little bit more.

      The reason things aren't quite lining up in some places is precisely because of this. :D I felt if I let things sit naturally on the grid, it's really tight. This could also be related to the overall width of the design. I think the container div is only 910px wide, as opposed to the 960 grid which seems to be used quite commonly.

      Perhaps its time for me to widen things up a bit.

      With regard to the button I agree entirely. I actually use Fireworks for my web design, and I'm finding it really hard to get really nice crisp rounded edges on buttons. Everything seems a bit blurry / hazy.

      I love Fireworks for its flexibility in creating buttons, creating things really rapidly, etc, but I think I have a way to go before I understand how to pull off really crisp buttons/ line work with it.

    • Ben Gillbanks
      Ben Gillbanks commented:
      Posted: on Sep 02, 2010 at 12:28 AM

      I've always gone for grids that 'feel' right instead of following rigid rules :) I think that as long as things are consistent you don't need to follow any set guidelines. Often more space = better so go with what you think works best rather than what someone said is a defined guideline.