headlinercreative.com - please be harsh, but kind!

[TeviH]

Hello everybody!

I'm just finishing up my new website, http://www.headlinercreative.com
Not all the content is yet up, but I'm adding it in small chunks at a time. The design and layout is pretty finalized, but I would love to hear crits and comments.

It's completely CSS-based (first time I did 100% css), and uses php includes to make smaller and reusable files (headers, menu, etc.), not to mention easier editting.

Let her rip! Please be harsh but kind!

http://www.headlinercreative.com

 

[Mike]

Loads lightning fast, congrats on that.

The images, backdrops, etc. are definitely different, which is another :tu you've left the "cookie cutter" ways, which is the first road to success.

The nav bar to the left needs to have the font centered, you're dropping to low to make it look good. Also, if possible, give the buttons a more 3D shape, something with depth perception, right now they are too bland.

I'd welcome some animation at some point, to really outline and demo your overall and complete skill set.

Other than that, i like what you've done, unconventional but good! :tu::tu: 2/3

 

[TeviH]

Thank you for the crits! I appreciate it! I'm trying to strike a balance between usable and interesting design. I thought centered font was too normal, but maybe you're right, that it's dropping too low.

Also, regarding animation - in my web design I try not to add stuff for the sake of adding stuff... I'm wary of adding animation for no reason, but I'll toss it around in my head. Maybe it would add a little more pizazz if I did it discreetly and in a functional way.

You made me realize the whole nav was a tad bit low, so I raised it slightly.

I also added some "fake 3D" by adjusting the border of the nav buttons.

re: "Lightning fast loading" - I was really shooting for that. I used an 8-bit transparent png for the gradient in the background - it's a skinny image just set to vertically repeat on top of a small 35x35 tiled stripe bg. The transparent gradient is the same image that is used on every page, so once you use it, it's in your cache.

[edit] Ok, I've thought about adding the animation, and I know what I want to do! Just need to make sure it isn't too distracting to the visitors... :gl:

 

[netguru]

nice layout. good job. change menu bar align=center. home text align=justify. all other not bad.

 

[TeviH]

Hey netguru - align=justify is really not used often in the professional world, especially for web. The jagged edges at the end of a paragraph help readability of a document. When setting justification on the web, words are not hyphenated, so you get some pretty severe "rivers" of space running through the document. Looks messy.

align=center is also not good for a list of nav buttons as it makes it easier to read down a list that is aligned to one side (generally left side for "left to right" languages).

thanks for looking, though - I hope this was informative.

It's not always a bad thing to justify, but in this case, I think it is.
Here's a link with a more thorough explanation on justification in typography: http://www.fonts.com/AboutFonts/Articles/FineTypography/JustifiedType.htm

 

[TeviH]

I got more feedback from others, and got rid of the bevel in the nav buttons. Also, I changed some colors around to make sure that text color stayed the same even on rollovers, keeping it always white.
Also made the link get a little longer on rollover.

There was an accessibility issue which I hadn't realized, but a friend of mine who always has his text larger because of vision problems was experiencing the site breaking up, so now text size will shift the size of certain margins and divs so everything still looks good. Yech. It's harder designing for accessibility, but I'm glad I did it.

Added a few new sections and now I'm loading in content.