Radio Website Design

G

GiggleStick69

Junior Member
Hey guys, I thought I already registered, but apparently not ;).

I'm doing a PSD of a radio website that I'll soon start coding with, and I'm looking for some feedback on it.

http://imgkk.com/i/bxsaE4.jpg

I've been told on the Pixel2Life forums that sans-serif fonts for the news text is appropriate, so I've kept that.

I've also been told to make the site more compact by reducing the size of some navigation items.

I'm looking for some more guidelines here, or if you have any comments on the above two lines.

Thanks, and don't forget to add feedback and comments! Constructive criticism is needed! Thanks!
 
The gradients and shadows are way too blatant, tone those down a bit.
And the site does have a bit of an apple-feel to it, probably because of the gradients.
 
@br3n

Yes, I do love Apple. I love their design. However, I'm a die-hard Windows fan. So don't get me wrong, I do love Apple design and Apple innovation, but I'll forever use a Windows machine.

@Onartis

THANK YOU for your feedback. So what I can do, is tone down the shadows and the gradients?

I can see that the navigation gradient looks way too strong, probably due to my rushing to get a preview uploaded..

Maybe I can also tone down the news section gradients as well, like the "current" selected gradient, as well as the unselected ones.

This is exactly what I want, please keep in the criticism!

I'll upload another image once I get a list compiled.

Thanks guys :D
 
every thing is so big! ... looks clunky and dated, also feels like poor apple imitation, personally I feel this should be reworked.
 
I like it, easy navigation, looks nice. It's may not be an amazing work of art but it's certainly user friendly and that's what I'd imagine the station would be looking for.

only thing that seems to be missing is the light grey gradient on footer to match the banner gradient.
 
@Sunburn

Yeah, it looks kind of big. I'll try to work on the size issues. Maybe the amount of whitespace is too much..

Can you tell me what looks clunk and outdated? The guys at P2L told me that the corners made them feel like it was a "baby safety system; choking prevention". Is that what's clunky? What's the dated part? I feel that it is a new refreshing look for a radio station, haven't seen a site that uses these before..

If it's a poor Apple imitation, would it look better if there weren't any "Apple" effects? Maybe the "letterpress" can go.

Can you elaborate on your "reworking"? Should I change the color scheme, get rid of "Apple" effects, or maybe some positioning?

@charles

Thanks for your comment. I know it's not the most amazing, as this is one of my first designs for another client other than myself. We all start learning at some point ;)

Ah, I know now what you're talking about. At first, I thought you were talking about the footer background, with the dark gray to almost black gradient. Then I noticed that above the navigation bar, the light gray gradient. I'll add that in and see how it looks.

I appreciate all these comments.

---

Nice to get a many different points of views, thanks for all the comments.
 
Just... get away from P2L. They're more about quantity than quality, and that's not what you should be looking for. On top of that are most members there just showing off what they made through a tutorial they found through P2L. Good, great idea to display your freshly learned techniques. Problem: a vast majority of those tutorials are of a poor quality. Look for communities which are more focused around a specific subject and offer quality content such as the Envato communities.

Another comment on your layout is that you should really make your buttons fit the style you used in the footer (and the content on the blue background). Don't overdo it of course :up:
 
Thanks for the great reply.

Maybe the navigation buttons could have that little "orb-ish" thing that I have with the footer and content with the blue background.

On another thought, maybe I overdid the buttons that have "flash player", "play on desktop", "skype", etc..., and can have a light blue or light gray background with the "orb-ish" background.

I really appreciate your help here.
 
Hi There Giggle,

I do agree with the chunkyness of the site, think about other users screen resolution when designing. I imagine your using a high resolution also. Its statistically known that more than half computer users use a 1024 x 768 screen resolution or slightly higer guys like myself and you are using high end graphics card and can see the site kinda nice drop your res down to 1024 x 768 and see what it looks like then. You will be shocked because it looks humongas!
 
My opinion is
- wadio logo at top, just looks too common, the choice of font is quite popular at the moment
- its too big, its nice to be able to click on buttons but sometimes its just too big.
- need to match up the blues
- the 'home' menu bar just seems out of place in relation to the others, it kind of looks like it was just stuck in as an after thought.
 
@glenwheeler

That's odd. Are you at 800x600 resolution?

The site width is 900px, which is a width that I like to work with.

The height, if I remember correctly, should be 1474 pixels high, if I remember correctly.

I'm not using a high end graphics card. I bought the laptop I'm using right now with an ATI X1400 Radeon Mobility card. It was either this or the not as good Nvidia 7300 Go.

My resolution is currently 1280x800.

@Levi

I have no say in the logo design. The logo is done in "Dirty Flamingo" at Dafont.com, and is a requirement. Do you have an idea to spice it up a bit? I have a light-light gray to light-gray gradient setup currently.

I will try to reduce the button's size, but I've been taught that bigger buttons equal better user experience.

I will definitely match up the blues. Thanks for catching that important detail. It takes away from the quality of the site. Thanks again.

The "home" tab was actually done while I was designing the site. I couldn't figure out what to put there, but I've settled on "wadio" as the text. Thanks for reminding me!

@future commenters

I'm stuck with the contents of the navigation bar, such as the "Home", "Team", "Music", etc.. so please don't ask me to change those. However, the "speaking navigation" that I have implemented can be changed, and can also be commented on if you like.

Thanks for all the great comments and future comments.
 
Sorry for the double post, but I want as much feedback as I can, so I'll just bump up my post.

Here is the new version; please ignore the odd shadow mismatch for the news section, compared to the other sections (50% opacity versus 25%), and the funny white spots that you may find along the shadow along the shadow. They are already fixed and implemented in my code.

http://imgkk.com/i/fEgBMf.jpg
 
Thanks! I compiled a list of stuff (finally) that needed to be fixed, and I'm pretty happy with how it looks, especially the navigation!

Anything else that needs to be done?
 
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