New Site Design and Some Free Pixel Fonts...

Geezus

I recently had an assignment to create a website using flash. Some students created websites about their family or favourite wrestler (why? i don't know). I took the opportunity to get my professional site up and running. There's still a good amount of content to be added. I just wanted to get some feedback on the layout, functionality, and over all design of the site before I move on. The home and textures section are the only two sections currently working.

Also, while learning flash and designing my site, I felt the need for better pixel fonts. Not wanting to pay $30 for a few characters, I took the time to learn how to publish bitmap fonts to .ttf. Took awhile, but I finished a few fonts, and you are all welcome to use them for whatever; if you have a need for pixel fonts that is, heh.

Anyhow, head on over to http://www.chriszdana.com/ and take a gander, thanks :]

Spacey

Yummy pixels! Thanks for the font pack Geezus.

As for the site, I like it. Simple and clean. Two things though...

First, on the home page, the second news entry needs a space after the "(" to be consistant with the other headings. Second, I think the buttons at the bottom would work better if they only bounced on the click. It's annoying to have it bounce on rollover and then again on the click. The unique interactive feedback the user gets would also be nice.

Are you planning on having an area where you can put info (texture dimensions, programs used, etc)?

adam

Geezus, nice site. Your textures look an awful lot like mine from about 3 years ago.

Yours on top, mine on the bottom.



Interesting.

Geezus

Doh, didn't even notice that error with the "(". I like the idea of bouncing when clicked, i'll play around with that a bit, see what I come up with. As far as info, in all the galleries I'm working on a larger view that will give details.
Thanks for the input!

Geezus

@Adam: The original design was inspired by a texture I had seen on a site awhile back, never knew the author (I'm assuming that'd be you), it was sitting on my pc in a favourites folder. I assure you it was not my intention to rip anything from you, nor is my texture an overlay of any of your work. My texture was created from scratch. I tend to draw inspiration from other work or from photo references. The work simply inspired me to see what I could do. In retrospec, my texture does too closely resemble yours. Really don't know what to do in this sort of situation, I suppose if you feel I've ripped something of yours then I'll take them down. At the very least I could put a "series inspired by.." link perhaps? Send a msg my way.

adam

Ha, hey man no worries. I'm not a fan of the texture (mine) and don't have it in my portfolio. It if you want to give some 'inspired by' credit that'd be cool. Don't sweat it

Geezus

Some inspired by credit will definetely go out to you. I don't know why you wouldn't be a fan of your texture, it's great. I'm actually glad I know who the creator of that is now. When I update the site with the details portion of the gallery, I'll put up a link to AdamBromell.com.

Back on track, do you have any critiques of my site? :]

Sabby

Nice work,uncluttered and functional - just a couple of minor things stood out. The first is the fact there is no feedback on clicking the menu - so you can't tell the working from the non working . I'm sure this will be fixed once you have each section in place, but for the moment , maybe disable them.

The other thing is the ultra high speed bouncing animations - These are cool for the initial loading of the site, but soon get irritating for navigation - I'd suggest something subtler , like a slow fade-in of a background colour, or a light glow on the select item.

Geezus

Thanks for checking it out Sabby. :] The irritation from the high bouncing mouse overs was a point my girlfriend had made also. I think a re-work of those are in order. I do want some sort of animation for the mouse overs though, something a little more than just a fade. I think perhaps having a color change on mouse over and a more subtle bounce when clicked (as Spacey meantioned), then leaving them slightly higher and off colour while the guest is in that section of the site would work well. Thanks for the input. :]