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Colour, Colour, Colour.
There are too many areas with varying colour schemes. I see your illustration in the header and it is so beautiful and creative. Why not continue those colours and feeling into the rest of your layout? There's a free flowing, hand-drawn quality to that and when I see the other elements on the page, they seem harsh and corporate (especially with all the grey).
I would replace your dark grey footer with the nice dark purple in your navigation bar for balance. Make all body text the same colour. Match your blog titles to the purple in your logo. Insert a purple hue to your drop shadow so it matches the gradations/haze in that illustration. Also, the drop shadow looks too large - I would tighten it up a bit. Consider changing the arrow colours.
The yellow bar - it might just be me, but I feel like the width of it is competing with the width of the header. I would consider narrowing the height of it. The yellow is great but because there is so much grey surrounding it, it looks out of place. If you include more purple surrounding it and eliminate a lot of your grey, the yellow will compliment the purple and be more integrated into the design.
Font: I like the font you used in the tagline - maybe use it for your headings? I don't like the font you used for the first 2 paragraphs or that you bolded the company name - the size competes with your logo. Shorten the line length so your paragraphs don't seem so long to read.
Lastly, your edges need to be better aligned (specifically near the navigation bar)
The Logo/illustration/nav bar are really well done - just continue it on down the page! Great work and good luck!
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Keli Marks commented:great feedback. Just posted an updated version. tried to keep the color flow going.
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Erin Davidson commented:
Great work! You've definitely improved it a lot. The changes in colour really make the layout more unified and very pleasing to view. Also, great job on fixing the height issue.
I did notice you changed the order of some main elements. I am wondering if that is logical or not. What is the intended use of this arrangement? Does the visitor scroll through those DVD boxes to find a film? Are there 2 areas to find films (scrolling and the drop-down menu?) I'm not sure anymore how these two areas connect with each other.
Also, it doesn't make sense to me to move the introductory blurb to the middle of the page as well as the "instructions" Hopefully this makes sense - what I mean is, instead of being told what to do (how to search) or what the page is about (dGenerate films is...), the visitor has to think about what the top "navigation" is first, how to use it to get the desired result, etc. and then scroll further to find out the what/why/how.
You are definitely on the right track though. Like Robert said, cleaning it up is going to have wonderful results. It's a very inviting design.
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Erin Davidson commented:
One other question - near the footer - what are those vertical lines with the drop shadow? Are they part of the design?
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Keli Marks commented:
Mmm i see your point. Yea the design doc i received wanted both elements, a manual or automatic rotating recent films section, as well as a drop down menu. I tend to get attached to early design elements and then they screw me up, however i like the 3D boxes, maybe for use somewhere else and not on the home page.
As it stands, i think the best communication would have the main text first, then the select film dropdown menu, then the roating recent films yellow bar.
the vertical lines are not part of the design, i have removed them now. I really appreciate your help on this design!
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Erin Davidson commented:
I like the 3D boxes too because they had interest to the page - you just need to find the right place for them. Try imagining someone visiting the page for the first time, and this is the home page right? Try to imagine what elements would make sense for them to see first. Something also to consider is that I don't get a 'homepage' feel from this... I might assume that this is a 'film page' so you need to make it clear, make the intro blurb near the top, give them an indication through your ordering. Okay that's enough blabbering from me haha. I'm glad to help.
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Sorry, I meant to say "height" instead of width when I was talking about the yellow showcase area. I would also match the blue from your middle dvd case to the blue in the illustration.