Homepage Review

doyle369

Member
Please can you reiview this homepage please

Thank you



locksmith_website.jpg
 
I'm sorry, but I have to say eugh, immediately.

A few things to bare in mind:


  • Don't mix two conflicting greys, it's minging
  • Add a background to the main content that isnt grey- they may be boring but the site shouldn't be
  • Use different text colours than just black
  • Imagine you were the customer, what would you want to see to get the impression the company is professional?
  • Make things line up, nettuts.com did an article recently about the importance of it, and how the eye prefers it to random placing of text, images and banner art.
TBH, this may be harsh, but this doesn't look anywhere near as good as your homepage does, and I'm assuming the company came to you because they saw your site? Once again, this just tells me that your homepage wasn't designed by you, which is pretty deceitful IMO.


And watch how you spell professional and copyright


Guys, this is an actual site BTW, not just a concept Will's adding to his portfolio
 
Well you should definitely check out some tutorials and galleries and then revise your design. Use more color because the grey is really boring and separate your different blocks more obvious (as Tim said).
 
Hey guys,

Just thought you may want to read this...

I sent a message to Will over facebook as I didn't want to make it public, but I'm pretty surprised by the reply...

Tim Pennington
Today at 19:33

I'm sorry, but your thread is really annoying me. I feel I'm going to explode.

Do you take design seriously? Because if you do, read up before you accept clients- design isn't supposed to be a source of easy money so you can have less debt at uni or whatever. Your clients are never going to be happy with paying for something which doesn't echo the quality of your website.

Designers work really hard to get clients, and then work even harder to produce a website. Your friend helped you produce a site (I meant "produce" strongly), and now you're trying to profit off a first impression that wasn't even created by you.

It took me 9 months to get a client, after stocking up on tutorials, books, examples of all that crap, not 3 weeks.

Reply to me...

Will Doyle
Today at 19:34

"I'm sorry, but your thread is really annoying me. I feel I'm going to explode"

Dont read it then

Sorry if the rest of DF doesn't really mind, but I do. I had to get it out TBH.
 
Your friend helped you produce a site (I meant "produce" strongly), and now you're trying to profit off a first impression that wasn't even created by you.

Nicely said!
:cheers:
 
Am I missing something? Why the message in the first place?

Admittedly it's not the best designed site (the typography needs scrapping and starting again from scratch), but it's a first draft by someone relatively inexperienced, right?

Is this not where we pool our collective experience and knowledge to help him out?
 
matt said:
Am I missing something? Why the message in the first place?

Admittedly it's not the best designed site (the typography needs scrapping and starting again from scratch), but it's a first draft by someone relatively inexperienced, right?

Is this not where we pool our collective experience and knowledge to help him out?
Lol yes you obviously missed something :)
 
No no. Not at all. Go to his website, and look at the quality of that. Look at his meta tags too, and generally inspect his CSS. It's obvious when you read his previous threads that he's not a designer, and he's being deceitful by publishing that design as his own.
 
matt said:
Admittedly it's not the best designed site (the typography needs scrapping and starting again from scratch), but it's a first draft by someone relatively inexperienced, right?

Is this not where we pool our collective experience and knowledge to help him out?

@Matt.

There has been some discussion on the posts that doyle369 leaves in the past mainly due to the fact that he a) post the same topic over and over again if at first he doesn't get the answer he 'wants' and b) he doesn't take to the critisim too well

I agree Tim shouldn't have really launched at him like that but I think its fairly obvious that doyle369 needs to a lot more work as he has previously been told.
 
Is this not where we pool our collective experience and knowledge to help him out?

Yes, of course it is, but for three weeks quite a few of us have been trying to question him about his site, and all that. I'm feeling sorry for the guys who his clients are TBH as he's bringing that site up for a critique like it was one his final drafts. And Will Doyle is getting paid for a first impression that was created by someone else- first impression being his website.
 
Apologies for the "launching" but it was annoying me. I did it in private instead of straight into this forum, but I had to actually tell people that he's not bothered that he's making money off someone else's design.
 
Tim I appreciate what you're saying, but can we keep this thread on-topic :)
If you don't have any further input on Will's design other than what you've already mentioned can we leave the private discussion and the issue regarding Will's own site design separate from this please.

Thanks all!
Greg
 
Thanks Tim appreciate that :)

Going back to the image you posted up Will, does the client not have an existing logo that you can use to focus the design on? It's lacking any real focus at the moment, and as a few others have already mentioned the grey backgrounds and lack of layout grid is making it look very unorganised IMHO.

Thanks,
Greg
 
Okay, it seems I've missed quite a lot. Apologies

Tim: I don't know what meta tags are and my knowledge of CSS ends at knowing what the acronym stands for, but I'll take your word for it.

Greg: Good point. Again, apologies.

Will: This site needs a lot of work, but everyone needs to start somewhere. (Idea for another forum, Greg, where everyone posts their earliest/crappiest work; call it The Humblatorium). Do a bit of research into typography and layout; 15 Excellent Examples of Web Typography. Part 1 | i love typography, the typography and fonts blog and Grid Designer 2 may be of use.
 
matt said:
Greg: Good point. Again, apologies.

(Idea for another forum, Greg, where everyone posts their earliest/crappiest work; call it The Humblatorium)

No need for apologies Matt, I can see why it would be a confusing read!
and as for that suggestion, that would be plain scary!!! at least as far as my early work goes!

We've all been there and it's amazing how far your work progresses by sticking with it and working on the weaknesses, I know that from my own experience. Will - highly recommend checking out the link Matt posted, getting an understanding of type and layout is essential :cool:
 
Greg said:
and as for that suggestion, that would be plain scary!!! at least as far as my early work goes!

Ditto, as I'm sure is the case for everyone else here. Actually, my tutor made me burn my worst piece of work in front of everyone in a first year crit. I kid you not. He said if I didn't set fire to it there and then it would plague me for the rest of my life as a designer. The worst bit is I don't smoke so I had to borrow someone else's lighter.

Sorry, another tangent.
 
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