A Review of warwickhoward.com by Ben Gillbanks

Too basic

  • Ben Gillbanks

    Ben Gillbanks

    Rank: 2 Titan

    2066

    • Design: 1
    • Purpose: 1
    • Originality: 1
    • Engagement: 1
    2 Votes
    This review has been awarded.
    Too basic

    Posted on Sep 08, 2010 at 7:39 AM

    As mentioned above this is really very basic and doesn't inspire me to part with my hard earned cash.

    I think you should spend some time browsing examples of minimal websites. There are loads of collections of them online and they all do simple black and white much better.

    I think you need to spend a bit more time looking at structure and coming up with something more fitting for the purpose, rather than using a generic design that has been done many times before.

    • Specific problems with the design include:

    • The header is dull and uninspiring. I would remove it entirely.

    • The navigation is fine, but not very interesting, and there's no difference between the navigation text and the body text

    • The font used isn't a standard web font so won't be available to most users.

    • The body text is hard to read for two reasons. 1) black text on a mid grey background reduces contrast and makes the text lose strength. 2) The font is tightly packed

    Some ideas/ solutions for you

    • remove the header and footer image.

    • remove the grey background on the body text.

    • increase the line-height on the body text

    • do something different with the navigation text. Maybe a different colour/ font weight. Try using borders to create interest.

    One idea you could try would be to make the page background a really light grey (like #f5f5f5;), then make the transparent strip behind the logo/ tagline and the footer pure white. This would create some interest without going over the top with detail. It would also allow the colourful logo to shine.