Need this webdesign Critiqued. Please give me Feedback.

[Noah Castor]

Hello my name is Noah Castor. Im a bit young I'm only 15 in my sophomore year of high school. Most people don't think I'm a tech guy cuz I play football but I am actually really good with technology. I took so many online courses to help with my studies. I have learned so much stuff over the past years but atm I usually just focus on logo design. I've made at least $600 in the past 6-8 months. I learned html and css last year but I stopped using it when I got into graphic design. Last month I started to look into web design in photoshop but I became disinterested. But recently I'm back at it. I relearned most of my html and css and learned even more designing tips in photoshop. I started designing a new webpage yesterday. Its for myself to show my services, web designs, and logo designs. Essentially a portfolio. I designed it with a grid so when I begin coding it I can make it responsive. I am trying to start like a small business to generate some income to pay for things my grandparents can't. Now to cut to the chase I need some experienced designers to review my work so far. It is not finished yet but I have the basics done on the design. Please just give me as many ideas to improve my design. Btw the image should be attached. Thanks everyone.

 

[Paul Murray]

Hi Noah, it seems like your design is still in a very early stage, but I'll do my best to feedback on what you have.

The main thing I'd change is the vertical spacing between several elements, particularly "Noah Castor Design", the bar, and "Awe inspiring…". At the moment it's a bit cramped, so I'd space them out a little.

On the flipside, I'd reduce the space between the lines of text beneath (known in the industry as "leading") to bring them closer together. If you have too much tracking, blocks of text can look disconnected, which is what's happening here.

The next section I presume is a slideshow of your work? The first thing I'd do is add a heading to tell people this is your work. You shouldn't assume that a user will understand your design as well as you do and there's no harm in adding 'waypoints' that they can use to navigate through the page. Secondly, I'd completely rethink the carousel, since A) they're not the most user-friendly of devices, and B) you can only display one piece of work at a time. Carousels are actually rated as one of the most annoying devices on sites and are often the reason people leave a site (known as "bounce" or "user bounce") yet designers still blindly add them in.

I always try to give users options and would probably opt for a grid of work so that they can choose which work they view and in which order. Remember, potential clients looking at portfolio will be looking for something in particular each time, so give them more chances to see what it is they're hoping to see. You can still give more focus to different pieces by using different sized cells in your grid like so:

 

[@GCarlD]

Paul has pretty much covered it in his critique; another thing i'd add to that is where you have 'Get Your Design Today' with the word 'Today' orange/red colour, I assume you chose to have 'Today' in that colour, to create emphasis and to stand out from the rest of the text? I feel it does the opposite and gets a bit lost in the background colour. The white text stands out a lot more. 'Today' probably doesn't need to be emphasised at all, but if you feel it is necessary, a simple bold 'Today' kept in the white coloured text should suffice.

Another thing is, you have what is called a 'Widow' with the word 'Customers' in the paragraph 'Breath Taking Designs That Will Catch The Eyes Of Your Customers.' A 'Widow' is a single word left on it's own at the end of a paragraph or column of text.

Lastly, what you have done so far for your age is remarkable, you should be really proud of yourself!

 

[Kliddy]

Firstly, I'd like to say I was in the same boat as you and give mad props. I played football, basketball and baseball. It was not easy playing sports and trying to develop my design skills. I'm 23 now and started web designing when I was 12 (now graduated with bachelor's in web design & interactive media) and what you have so far is awesome and you should most definitely keep with it. And please, do not take these critiques as a shot at you. Just trying to provide some helpful input.

I can't really provide any critiques on the logo as that is my weakest point as well, but I can say that Paul did an excelling job critiquing it and I would encourage you to take his advice. I love the color palette you have decided to use. However, the orange is pretty difficult to read on the blue and you have to remember that not all your visitors will have good eyes, so you want to make it as more visible. Also, where the three icons are in the design (light bulb, computer, money), having all capitalized letters is actually harder to read than lower case. Using all uppercase letters for headers is nice because it's saying, "Hey! Look at me!" followed by the article or description. During college my professor mentioned that it's much harder to read in all uppercase because our minds can tell the shapes of lowercase letters which makes it easier and faster to read through. In addition, having all uppercase letters in your description of article can give the viewer the impression that you're yelling at them.

I think you should experiment on highlight colors and display text. For instance, the first thing I looked at in your banner were the highlighted words "at your finger tips" but your name is blended in. My initial thought was, "What's at my finger tips?" Then I looked up and saw your name and the purpose of the website. You need to emphasize who you are and what the purpose of the website is. If you highlighted your name, then that's the first thing I would read and I would automatically scan down (because of the flow you just created).

Again, you have done an awesome job and seems like you know your sense of direction. Keep with it and I hope these critiques help!