Is anyone here experienced in web design?

Bombshell

to cut a long story short, I'd like to get back into web design so I can start selling designs, I doubt I'll be anything amazing but any extra income at the moment would do me a world of good.

I'm doing a few designs at the moment, and I need some crits on it, where I could improve and what I should be keeping in mind when designing, etc. etc.

EDIT: update 2
Here is the design in question atm

I'm about to fill in the empty space, but for the time being does anyone have any crits on the way I've executed the head of the page and the navigation buttons? (bright orange one being the selected one ofc)

Any and all help appreciated,
Thanks in advanced,
Bombshell

passerby

what do you mean by just designs are you just selling the layouts, and css?, since i doubt there is much money in that versus selling a full solution for someone, or doing web application development and integration work.

Farfarer

Hard to tell without content or knowing what the site's supposed to be for. There's not much to it so far either, in terms of actual page content layout.

The header's pretty big for having very little in it - lots of screen real estate being potentially wasted.

*shrug*

Bombshell

okay thanks I'll make the header a bit smaller and update again when I've got a bit more of a layout to it.
As for what the site is for I'm not to sure, I guess I should have thought of that before I jumped straight into design. I'll fit it to what I expect the Push2Play site would need (Push2Play is my game development team) So I'll probably have 4 page types, Blog, Projects, Gallery, Information.

also
@passerby
I mean selling the full site design (HTML, PHP, CSS, images, etc. etc.), if I get better maybe do commissions if anyone would see me worth it.
But at the moment I'm just sorting out the general look of the page in illustrator, I'll then split up the images for the page and build the page in Dreamweaver.

I understand a lot of sites will for a small amount buy the rights to sell basic web designs and templates, that and a few sites will sell templates cheap and take a bit of the profit themselves. I'll have such sites as my first target.

Bombshell

Okay I know this isn't much but I've updated it, showing the basic layout of the page, subject to change of coarse.

Alemja

My current job is web design/development, a few things come to mind by looking at your design:

What php system do you plan on using? Wordpress, CakePHP, something from scratch?
I don't see anything wrong with trying to map out the look of your site before actually coding it, but don't just go slicing the images up and putting it in dreamweaver it will be such a pain to update. That is something you need to consider as well if you are making this as a design to sell, how easy is it to update/expand in the future.
I would also avoid dreamweaver at all costs and just do hand code it, you will learn much more and dreamweaver does a shoddy job of making websites.

Some sites that can help you learn are http://www.alistapart.com/ and http://www.w3schools.com/

Competition for freelancing websites is rather fierce and demanding, looking at what other web designers do and current trends in web design will help you out. Right now that's all I've got from off the top of my head, I hope it helps

passerby

ya got to agree with Alemja just stick without doing anything in dreamwheaver, it will be much easier to update, and more efficient to do it all by hand.

also instead of working on a layout in advanced, why not try to get some freelancing work, via something like ODesk, there are lots of contracts for various types of web development there that contractors can bid for, most of these will want certain skill sets, like knowledge of CMS systems such and wordpress, or Drupal, or good skills with mysql.

mention freelanceing and biding on contracts since itis much easier, to make a website, when you already know it's requirements, and target audience.

glynnsmith

Alemja wrote: »

I would also avoid dreamweaver at all costs and just do hand code it, you will learn much more and dreamweaver does a shoddy job of making websites.

I think your advice here is incomplete, in that Dreamweaver is a competent coding app. The part about Dreamweaver you should avoid like the plague is the WYSIWYG crap. If you use code view (hand coding) only, it's as good as anything else out there.

As for the OP: this isn't good, unfortunately. What you've posted looks like a site from 10 years ago. I don't think you'll get much interest in it. I'm not trying to be intentionally harsh here. I'm trying to be honest. I think if you're aiming to build this site with the view to selling it, you're going to be wasting time.

It looks like it's already very image-heavy, and you don't even have any content in there, yet.

There's nothing in the masthead, other than a logo and a gradiented fade. Massively wasteful. It looks like you're making this in Photoshop (or Illustrator) and plan on slicing it up as images.

The font you're using for the nav links is horrid - Are you planning on using images for those? If so, you should probably spend more time looking at how other people are doing it, and get some up to date web development and design-for-web books, specifically markup, CSS, some PHP, jQuery.

I hope you can take this reply as intended - Designing themes/sites professionally is massively competitive and the standard of quality has never been higher. For you to post the above, with the view to selling it once complete, is short-sighted and might suggest you're not really aware of what the standard is, nowadays.

A few popular theme developers:

http://salleedesign.com/home/
http://www.premiumpixels.com/
http://www.kriesi.at/

Bombshell

just to clarify, by slice up, I didn't mean actually slice up, I make the GUI in pieces and assemble them in illustrator to see how it would look finished.
Also I code it all myself, Dreamweaver is for the sake of seeing it as I build it (and having the virtual server)
@glynnsmith
I understand how you mean it, I take no offense, thank you for being honest. This particular design I don't intend to sell, this is just a small project to get me back into web design.
I keep checking recent designs to try and keep it up to standard, I know what I've got now is no where near any standard, but its better to try and fail than not try at all, I'll keep at it, hopefully I'll get a better design going soon.

PaulP

Hey bombshell. I think the best thing you can do is make up a client (or build a website for yourself) and then judge the layout depending on the content the site is providing. I find the main concerns with setting up a website is making sure the site is easy to navigate, the content is easy to read, and the coding is 'sound' and bug-free. Then you can be more flexible with dynamic content/layout and such.

Also I know Dreamweaver has a bad name because of noobs slicing and sticking and laying down 'clip-art' coding, but I find it very useful for when I'm laying out the foundations and debugging. Best of luck!

Bombshell

Yeah I've restarted and decided to make the client myself and the Push2Play team.
I've started reading this which makes a fair bit of sense
http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/web-design/web-2-0-design-style-guide/
So I'm trying to make a more stripped down, to the point design.

m4dcow

I agree with alot of what has been said, but i would also say you should check out some sort of grid system, like http://960.gs/.

You get flexibility of using column widths in a variety of combinations with the same total width. It will make it easier to put it together when you have finished with your design.

chrisradsby

m4dcow wrote: »

I agree with alot of what has been said, but i would also say you should check out some sort of grid system, like http://960.gs/.

You get flexibility of using column widths in a variety of combinations with the same total width. It will make it easier to put it together when you have finished with your design.

True story. I also recommend designing using grid-systems, I use it all the time for all graphic design tasks. :thumbup:

Bombshell

okay update, I like the header but the body of it seems... well. poo.
Any and all crits are welcome! I need to get it looking better :P

Mike Yevin

i feel you are using a bit too much room for everything at the moment, the header and footer are far too large and compress the amount of information your visitors will see "above the fold". i see web 2.0 as minimal, simple, and clean. your nailing clean and simple, but lacking with minimalism.

utilize space efficiently, while also keeping in mind that negative space is just as important.


another thing that stood out to me (although im not sure if you were just "blocking out" your text) is the fact that your header navigation text is very thin and hard to read, especially against the colored background. a thicker font will help separate the menu navigation from the rest of the content.


i've done a quick paintover to illustrate some of my points. keep in mind i hardly changed any design at all, just size and spacing of objects:



full size:



also im unsure of whats going to be within the left column in the main content area, but looks to be like you could do away with that completely.

hopefully i could be some help

jipe

Hope this doesn't come across the wrong way, but this isn't the best place to look for web design advice. I would seek out places where design professionals hang out and ask for feedback. You might also look into taking design & web classes, or at the very least poring over some books on grids and typography.

Ben Apuna

You might be interested in a free Stanford course Human-Computer Interaction being offered this January.

Bombshell

@Mike Yevin
thanks for that, it does look alot better when you show it like that. I've made a few changes since my last post going in that general direction, but seeing other things that could be done with the colour scheme and style helps a lot.
As for the left part, I couldn't agree more, I've repurposed and resized it so now its in better proportion to the rest of the page.

@jipe
don't worry, I only intended to ask as a quick question. On the subject of grids, after the latest draft I posted, I started using proportions and positioned things in such a way they keep inline with a comfortable grid.
Also I knew there was something I'd forgotten about, Typography I should probably take a look into, thanks.

passerby

i think you should think of purpose and content before the layout and design, the former to things should help you define the best design.

ask your self things like what your target audience is?, what the site is intended to do? (eg. Market a product, be a community hub, sell your own skills etc), also think out core feature from the very start, and what kinda content should the the primary upfront and center content and what, is the secondary content. Also as you create the layout try to think about how you can re-use elements, to save time, and how it can best be accomplished in your templates, and css.

DrunkShaman

Whom do you intend to sell it to? I ask this because the banner looks very basic, and the colours look too static. =\

If you can make the the top gray menu bar slide in from the right upon mouse cursor pointing there, or make buttons instead of typing the links out. It would make it look a bit more legit.

Same thing for the top blue menu bar.

You will need to put something in the side bar on the left.

Also it is worth making DWT (Dynamic web templates) and empty forms so that you wont have to do this for every other page. Because you will need to put something on the rest of the pages as per the menu options.

This website template looks very empty, no offense.