Yep, another website feedback thread

foodpoison

foodpoison

Messages
6,253
Name
Sean
Edit My Images
Yes
I'd like to place this into context if I may.

This website is solely for use as a portfolio for my images.
I am aware of some very slight errors:
- when the page loads the lightbox gallery, there is a bit of a twitch/glitch for a split second. It's fine.
- in the 'hire' section, when clicking on 'other services' the side toolbar navigation bar thing extends. I can't for the life of me figure out why.
-I'm aware that the homepage requires the user to scroll. No information apart from the disclaimer is there so it's not a biggy

I want feedback on layout only. Things that could be improved, if anything. I know that once you've been staring at your own creation for hours on end it's difficult to see the issues with it.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I know you've all been waiting!
www.seantaylor-photography.com
 
Hey :)
I thought i would pay you back for the times you have help me out!

*Its taking an absolute age to load (could be my connection)
*If I'm honest the 'Sean Taylor' Header font looks a little out of touch with your images and a tad frumpy??
*A good free host is 000space.com if you need it but shhhh, don't tell anyone! :)
*Maybe add some flash? Maybe to the header to animate it abit? I can build one and email it if you like (easy to embed using dreamweaver)

Please bare in mind i am being harsh on it, your site serves the purpose well :)
If you have any questions, feel free to pm me them

Jamie
 
Also if you put your buttons to the right of your image, because they are all portrait you should fit it in without scrolling :)
 
On hire the grey buttons on white background does not really fit with the buttons at the top, style wise. I don't really like the buttons, but I tend to just go for plain blocks of colour with maybe a bit of gradient. Bevels etc tend to look fairly amateurish, especially as the rest of the design is quite flat.
 
PauloWanClift said:
On hire the grey buttons on white background does not really fit with the buttons at the top, style wise. I don't really like the buttons, but I tend to just go for plain blocks of colour with maybe a bit of gradient. Bevels etc tend to look fairly amateurish, especially as the rest of the design is quite flat.
Click to expand...

Agree with the buttons. I tended to stick to a gradient colour scheme, i'm all for simplicity :)
 
Jamie Smith said:
Hey :)
I thought i would pay you back for the times you have help me out!

*Its taking an absolute age to load (could be my connection)
*If I'm honest the 'Sean Taylor' Header font looks a little out of touch with your images and a tad frumpy??
*A good free host is 000space.com if you need it but shhhh, don't tell anyone! :)
*Maybe add some flash? Maybe to the header to animate it abit? I can build one and email it if you like (easy to embed using dreamweaver)

Please bare in mind i am being harsh on it, your site serves the purpose well :)
If you have any questions, feel free to pm me them

Jamie
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback Jamie :)
Could you explain what you mean by 'out of touch' and 'frumpy'? Not sure what if I understand...

I know how to create flash, I used to use flash a lot. However, I don't like flash integration for the sake of it on websites. It looks fancy, sure, but I don't personally believe it adds anything to the site. Thanks for the offer, but I think I'll politely pass :thumbs:
 
PauloWanClift said:
On hire the grey buttons on white background does not really fit with the buttons at the top, style wise. I don't really like the buttons, but I tend to just go for plain blocks of colour with maybe a bit of gradient. Bevels etc tend to look fairly amateurish, especially as the rest of the design is quite flat.
Click to expand...

I've gone for a flat minimalist design, primarily because of simplicity, secondly because that's pretty much how I design everything.

However I totally agree with the buttons on the hire page. Bit rubbish.
I'm going to make a to-do list and get on these changes asap.

I don't entirely agree with 'amateurish' as far as bevelling goes (besides it's an inner shadow and inner glow ;)), but I understand your point.
 
Jamie Smith said:
Hey :)
I thought i would pay you back for the times you have help me out!

*Its taking an absolute age to load (could be my connection)
*If I'm honest the 'Sean Taylor' Header font looks a little out of touch with your images and a tad frumpy??
*A good free host is 000space.com if you need it but shhhh, don't tell anyone! :)
*Maybe add some flash? Maybe to the header to animate it abit? I can build one and email it if you like (easy to embed using dreamweaver)

Please bare in mind i am being harsh on it, your site serves the purpose well :)
If you have any questions, feel free to pm me them

Jamie
Click to expand...

I don't know why it's taking so long to load, there isn't anything on it that is heavy in size :shrug:
 
foodpoison said:
I don't entirely agree with 'amateurish' as far as bevelling goes (besides it's an inner shadow and inner glow ;)), but I understand your point.
Click to expand...

Oh I'm just a design snob :lol: Take no notice of me, if its not keeping up with the latest design trends I stick my nose up.
 
What screen resolution are you using?

On your initial page I have to scroll down to see your copyright statement, which I don't have to do on the other pages. I'd update this start screen such that scrolling is not required.

I'd also resize the photos that are used throughout to ensure that your navigation and photos all line up.

Is there a reason why the Hire page has a different format to the others? Go with a standard look on each page, even if this means changing the page navigation scheme to accomodate.
 
Qwerty69 said:
What screen resolution are you using?

On your initial page I have to scroll down to see your copyright statement, which I don't have to do on the other pages. I'd update this start screen such that scrolling is not required.
Click to expand...

On my computer it's 1680x1050, however i set the page size to 1024px wide.

Will do :) I made a note of this in the OP

Qwerty69 said:
I'd also resize the photos that are used throughout to ensure that your navigation and photos all line up.
Click to expand...

I did resize them - they're all 100px high, irrelevant of width...
Do you mean the navigation bars like this:
skiingboardingbar.jpg
? To make sure they line up?

Qwerty69 said:
Is there a reason why the Hire page has a different format to the others? Go with a standard look on each page, even if this means changing the page navigation scheme to accomodate.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's a different format because it's a different page. The other 3 pages are galleries of different subject matter, whereas the hire pages are different... It's kind of the point...
Unless I'm missing your point? :shrug:
 
foodpoison said:
I did resize them - they're all 100px high, irrelevant of width...
Do you mean the navigation bars like this:
skiingboardingbar.jpg
? To make sure they line up?
Click to expand...

The different widths of the photos mean that certain photos get padded with more white space than others, and from a User Interface perspective (sorry I work in IT) it just struck me as a little strange.

As an aside I love the shots from New York. Top of the Rock is superb :clap:
 
Qwerty69 said:
The different widths of the photos mean that certain photos get padded with more white space than others, and from a User Interface perspective (sorry I work in IT) it just struck me as a little strange.

As an aside I love the shots from New York. Top of the Rock is superb :clap:
Click to expand...

Still not sure I understand...
Any chance you could screenshot and diagram it so I can understand, totally cool if you can't :)

Thanks for the comments though :) much appreciated :)
 
Sorry, took a little more than 5 minutes.

I was thinking something like this:

3429865248_9dd6c78336.jpg


Where your images are lined up in a more uniform grid, and there is no light background (which I found a little distracting).
 
The logo looks amateurish to me, not being harsh but it looks "thrown together". Standard font, no text alignment it just does not do your pics justice. It's a problem with using Arial as it so common, it shows no real imagination as is the standard font after times new roman, play about and see if anything else grabs you.

The whole shadow, inner glow, bevel thing as much as you may not agree is amateurish again. Look at your average amatuer site it is likely to be there, then look at a pro site, well you get the idea. The effect itself is not amateurish but it's use in a variety of poor design (esp websites) will make some people automatically think your site is in the same vein.

The layout of the hire page, again with the extra tabs (esp againt a white background) again does not work.
I see what you are going for, which seems to be a very minimal site, but with some of the things you have put into it, you have not quite achieved it.

Again another design snob here with a serious font obsession, it won't take much to make an amazing site though, and some great pics on there.
 
ding76uk said:
The logo looks amateurish to me, not being harsh but it looks "thrown together". Standard font, no text alignment it just does not do your pics justice. It's a problem with using Arial as it so common, it shows no real imagination as is the standard font after times new roman, play about and see if anything else grabs you.
Click to expand...

It's Calibri, but I guess it's a common theme here.
I'll have a smash around with some fonts, see if I can think of anything.

ding76uk said:
The whole shadow, inner glow, bevel thing as much as you may not agree is amateurish again. Look at your average amatuer site it is likely to be there, then look at a pro site, well you get the idea. The effect itself is not amateurish but it's use in a variety of poor design (esp websites) will make some people automatically think your site is in the same vein.
Click to expand...

So you're saying that because amateurs use it, it's amateurish?
So as far as design goes, it's actually perfectly fine, and that it might just give off the wrong idea?

I've had a look at various pro's websites, and all they seem to have are regular text links.

Maybe that's all that's necessary :shrug:

ding76uk said:
The layout of the hire page, again with the extra tabs (esp againt a white background) again does not work.
I see what you are going for, which seems to be a very minimal site, but with some of the things you have put into it, you have not quite achieved it.
Click to expand...

I understand the tab, will change that, it's clearly not working.
However I don't understand what you mean by the bit in bold, would you mind explaining?

ding76uk said:
Again another design snob here with a serious font obsession, it won't take much to make an amazing site though, and some great pics on there.
Click to expand...

Thanks very much for your comments, they're very much appreciated :thumbs:
 
Would love to take a look, but get this error:

This account has been suspended.
Either the domain has been overused, or the reseller ran out of resources.

:(
 
Right by a minimal site I mean something like this

http://www.zackarias.com or http://www.jonhumphries.com/

There is nothing to distract from the photos, everything else is very neutral and very small. So the main focus of your vision is the pics.

There are 2 colours of the site apart from the pics, which is a plain background and a colour for the font. Unfortunately when I tried to check again this morning, your site was not accessible so doing this from memory, but your logo is way too big and not aligned to itself or the website, there are more than the 2 colours (usually balck and white) which I think detracts from the images.

I would look at grid design, this is the best thing I was ever taught, and really does make stuff look more professional.

Check this link

http://www.welie.com/patterns/showPattern.php?patternID=grid-based-layout

Really should give you an idea of what I am on about, and hopefully should help you with a few tweaks.

There ladies and gentlemen you have my 100th post. 100 posts deep, ah yeah, rolling with the big dogs now!:woot:
 
Thanks for your comments ding, I'll have a look at sorting stuff out. I don't think I want to re-design my whole website just yet. I've had a lot of very positive comments from a lot of people that aren't professional (or even nitpicky :p) web designers or IT consultants, so I think I'm going to sort out the hire page sidebar, the navigation bar, and sort out the images in the portrait/landscape/sport hub :thumbs:

I've been locked out of my account on my web host for some reason. Well annoying.
 
looks like we exceeded your bandwidth...
 
Okay, so it turns out that because the homepage had a HTML slideshow, it was pulling up a new image every 4 seconds. Did 2.2gb of bandwidth over a day :eek:

Richard explained this and simply asked for the slideshow to be taken down, fair enough really.
I've made a few changes but have been busy today and so not got around to making massive changes. Homepage and logo have been changed (need a new picture uploaded to the home page so bear with me).
Hire pages have been revamped and I'm in the process of ponsing around with the navigation bars in the various galleries.

Work in progress.
 
Also, I'm really struggling with a logo.
I've just used the 'Forte' font for the time being but I'd like something awesome. I just can't think.

If you guys have any ideas, even as just something in your head, try describing it on her for me. It would be much appreciated.
 
Still looks too big to me. Maybe try using the same font in the same size as your new links. Put no spaces between the letters, just use a change of colour and bold.

SeanTaylorPhotography

SEANTAYLORPHOTOGRAPHY

Really basic example.

Light grey on red would work well on a black. Really bring down the size. Maybe a little bigger than your page links, but not very much. Another one would be to make photography smaller and put it underneath Sean Taylor but make sure the p of photography lines up with the S of Sean and the y lines up with the r of taylor

Hope this helps a little
 
Thanks dude, helped a lot!

I've since made the following changes (so you can keep up with the progress :))
-Changed logo once
-Taken emboss effect buttons down as a swap for regular text links
-Taken the HTML based slideshow off of the front page (currently displays 'under construction')
-Re-done the navigation bars found in portrait/landscape/sport, and changed for text and 75x75 thumbs in a grid format using a table
-In 'Hire', swapped buttons at the side for regular text based links

To do:
-Thinking of taking the image pricing information down and swapping it for regular text
-Swapping the pricing out and just giving an email address - contact for a quote
-Putting in like a 'Guestbook' page sort of thing - people can leave feedback that's displayed here
-Re-doing the logo
 
Had a design of some logos:
Tell me which you like the layout of, tell me which colour combinations you like, any feedback would be amazing :)

Top, bottom
3434706483_35be445b6f.jpg


Side to side, no caps
3434706541_eb31e765a1.jpg


Smaller, capitalized first letters
3434706605_3e9e33a332.jpg


Aligned at the line, top, bottom
3434706733_a98a69c82b.jpg


Colours swapped, aligned opposite
3434706771_3903b54ecc.jpg
 
ding76uk said:
3rd one down for me. Not too sure on the font if I am honest. Maybe try it with the same font as your links on under new webpage.

Sorry if I seem like I am really picky dude:geek:, and remember only one view here!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I get it dude. Really appreciate your time.
Spoken to a bunch of people (did a sample survey, what a nerd :p) and only 1 out of 20 people disliked the logo, however 15/20 agreed that the site had improved since it was first put up.

I'm going to put up a static image on the main page (or maybe a few), re-do the hire pages and then I think I'll be happy with it :)
 
ding76uk said:
Just looked now it's gone live again. Looks really good mate!

Mine will be live any day now, so please feel free to crit when I get it up.

And sample survey may sound nerdy, but it shows that your site has improved and that you are getting positive response, which is what all this is about.
Click to expand...

Cheers :) Means a lot :)

I'll try critting it but I don't know if I'll make as good a job as you did ;)

People laugh at me for making a website, but hey, being a nerd pays off! Look at Bill Gates! I bet he's not suffering the tight ropes of the economical crisis!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top