Neverside

Blog layout..

Here.

Tell me what ya think. Maybe some advice on how to make it look better. Although I do wanna keep it as simple as possible. Critique is always welcome!

It's very, very simple. 7th-grader simple.

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Originally posted by forcemorph:

It's very, very simple. 7th-grader simple.

I take it you don't like it then? Anyway, don't see what wrong with simple sites. It works for google. Anyway, at first I just wanted to do a white site with black text, just that, just text. Nothing else. But I was bored so I wanted to do at least some photoshopping/flashing. So yea. Anyway, if you have tips on how to make it... less simple while still being simple.

Last edited by sal, July 4th, 2005 05:17 AM (Edited 1 times)

I don't like it. Basically because it looks like you made it with a site builder, like geocities? And simple sites can still look very professional, and yours definately doesnt look professional haha. But if it's a site that is just for friends or whatnot... then it doesnt really matter i guess..

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As a general rule, simplicity is hard to do well. Truly good minimal designs take just as long or longer than non-minimal designs.

With a simple text based design, you really need to understand quite a bit about typography. How many characters should there be on a line for optimum readability? How much space should there be between the lines? The words? The letters? What font is easiest to read on a monitor and at what size? Should the background be darker than the text or the other way around?

I think that if you asked yourself these questions, and found the answers to them, and applied your new knowledge to this design, it would improve immensely.

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Hello. I am Joe Shoop's Portfolio

It's simple, but i won't demean your style. I think it reminds me of some of the older BBS styles ites (phrack.com) things like that. As long as it functions as you need it to, and your proud enjoy

Personally, i would like a bit more detail, and would say, possibly go research on hwo you can make it better. Maybe find a good source of inspiration and work form there.

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Neversidian Development Editor

like stated above, its not good because your going for a simple design (thats better than being a beginner and trying to get a graphic heavy site.) but you didnt pull of the simplicity well.
the background on the content also doesnt look too great itself. the spacing in the shoubox forms & posts should also be increased.

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scudworkz.com.

Minimalist designs can be a real pain to pull off, especially when in your beginning stages of web design. You may find it beneficial to try and not stick to any specific guidelines such as minimalism whilst still getting to grips with what works and what doesn't work in web design -- a journey of discovery which you will travel as you create design after design (that sounds a little proverbial and corny, sorry). Instead, try to focus on simply creating something that looks good.

As said above, you need a very strong grasp of general typography, colour and layout to create an appealing minimalist design. Every single contour, line, colour and gradient matters when it comes to minimalism, whilst with more graphically oriented design you have a little extra room to experiment with graphics. Experimentation is a very important thing during the learning process, whilst minimalism is more of a surgical type of web design, where you have to know from the very beginning where you're going and how.

That's what I've found in my experience, anyway. Simple designs aren't as easy to make attractive as they may originally seem, and you shouldn't bind yourself to that theme simply because it's a blog. As for your actual design, I will give my input on what I feel needs improving with your design. Whilst there's no easy way to say this, my current recommendation would be to cease development with your current design and start a new one.

1) There is no general container for your entire design. Whilst some designs can get away with it, most need some kind of defined area which everything should be contained in -- it's very rarely a good idea to have a design which fills the entire page unless you're designing for a heavily content driven website. A blog does not fall under this category.

2) You have the same background colour for pretty much everything, with the exception of a very basic background image which does little more than cause distraction whilst reading your main text body. Designs should have designated areas which are clearly seperated from each other. The best way to go about this, unless you know what you're doing with regards to spacing, is to use different backgrounds for the two areas. Alternatively, use some kind of divider between the two.

3) Be wary when spacing out your design. Try to keep your margins and padding between areas as small as possible, whilst still retaining sufficient room to clearly divide the areas. At the moment your menu/shoutbox is a mile away from the main text body in terms of web design, and simply looks disjointed. It almost looks like it doesn't belong in the design at all, and is simply some kind of textual advertising placed there by your host.

4) Your header suffers from the same "lost" look that your menu has. It simply looks unattached to the design, and fairly random. A header should generally fill the top area of the design horizontally, which is kind of difficult with your design due to point 1. If you encompass everything into a container, make sure the header is an actual header, and not an image randomly placed and centred at the top. Work it into the design, rather than simply sitting above it.

5) This isn't so much a problem with this design, but may manifest itself more clearly in your future designs if you don't fix it now. You have no padding around the text in your main content area, with your text touching right up against the edges of the table cell it's in. There is never an excuse to have text touching right up against whatever box it's in, and doing so causes huge readability problems when you have a more defined background colour. Always pad your text!

6) Read a bunch of tutorials and learn how to design using CSS. Whilst tables may seem all well and good at first, when you get serious about web design you will find that you want everything to look exactly as it's spaced and presented in your Photoshop concept. CSS allows you to place things to the exact pixel, and move them exactly where you want them. Tables do not offer this luxury, without elaborate image slicings. CSS is not an easy thing to learn right now due to various browser issues, but I would heavily recommend it. This brings me onto..

7) I may be off on this, but I'm guessing that you didn't design your website in Photoshop at all, and simply skipped straight into the design stage. Almost all good web designers produce their design 99% in Photoshop, placing everything exactly where and how they want it, since it obviously gives them total control over the design. Only after they've finalized it in Photoshop will they start exporting individual pieces for use in the html'd version. This becomes pretty vital if you decide to use CSS, since you have to know from the start how you want it to look. You shouldn't ever make it up as you go along when at the html stage -- leave that to Photoshop.

8) Don't use Flash if you can avoid it. There is no real reason for you to be using Flash in your header right now, since all it does is cycle the colour of your text. Frankly, that colour cycling effect doesn't really add to your design at all, and simply looks out of place. Unless you have an unavoidable requirement of Flash, leave it out.

9) You should look closely at other websites and how they use colour. Certain colours and tones compliment each other far better than others, and you will find your design skills improve dramatically if you simply know what looks good with what. A basic example is dark blue and strong orange -- two colours matched in heaven. Another is dark grey and medium grey-green. Study colours and you will be able to whip off combinations like second nature, which is vital for creating unique identities. A similar philosophy can be applied to typography -- you have to know what works with what. It's almost like an inverted game of rock/paper/scissors. Fun. :)

10) Know when to quit. Sometimes you can spend hours on a design, hoping that it'll go somewhere after receiving an initial burst of inspiration. However, if you find that you simply cannot take it any further, be prepared to just abandon the design and start fresh. This can be a very difficult thing for new web designers to grasp, since basically putting 4 hours of work into the trash is never easy. However, you haven't lost everything -- you've learnt that the particular combination of design elements which you utilised in that design don't work! Keep doing this for long enough, and you'll run out of non-working combinations. :)

11) Don't be afraid to borrow ideas during the learning process. I'm not encouraging you to steal complete designs, or directly take anything from a design. However, whilst in the learning process where you don't intend to use your designs for any corporate use, don't be afraid to borrow ideas from inspiring designs on the internet. csszengarden.com is a great place to become inspired, and simply browsing through there for a few minutes can energize you into creating something new and hot. After borrowing from enough styles, you will eventually craft your own -- a hybrid of so many different varieties of design that it becomes your own. Just never directly steal -- only become inspired. If you think two colours on a site look good together, remember them!

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thrik.net // gamesurge.net // grimfandango.net // scummbar.com

Last edited by Thrik, July 7th, 2005 06:29 AM (Edited 2 times)

Quote:

7) I may be off on this, but I'm guessing that you didn't design your website in Photoshop at all, and simply skipped straight into the design stage. Almost all good web designers produce their design 99% in Photoshop, placing everything exactly where and how they want it, since it obviously gives them total control over the design. Only after they've finalized it in Photoshop will they start exporting individual pieces for use in the html'd version. This becomes pretty vital if you decide to use CSS, since you have to know from the start how you want it to look. You shouldn't ever make it up as you go along when at the html stage -- leave that to Photoshop.

I would agree wtih this but I would take it a step farther and say that all good web designers start in photoshop, all GREAT webdesigners start in a sketchbook/with a sketch and then move into photoshop

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Last edited by Sykil, July 7th, 2005 09:52 PM (Edited 1 times)