Feedback please!

[infocentre]

Hi guys!

My name is Alex, im new to the site – new to web design in-fact!

In January of this year, my dad took me on full time to cover a couple of clients that needed a website creating/updating. I am completely self-taught and im loving it! I dont think my work is the best, but i would like to think i am pretty creative with a media background.

anyways, i banged out 4 websites for my dads company, infocentre, and now need to bring in new clients BUT, taking a look at their/our existing site made me nearly throw up in my mouth! (http://www.infocentre.com – look if you dare!)

I wanted to cut out all the shite, and bring it up to date. (not hard seeing as its about 10 years old?!). The company specialises in travel booking systems for the leisure industry and have some pretty big clients. But design was certainly not their forte. thats why im here :)

Anyways, take a look and let me know what you think; http://www.meonvalleytravel.com/testing/infocentre/default.html Obviously not finished yet and the content needs bulking, but you can see where i have played around with a few things, like the Services drop down and the contact form face.

be gentle guys..
thanks
Alex

[Luminated]

I feel the logo could be a little less cheesy, perhaps less glow. The grass looks a bit too amateur, you should think about whipping up a higher detailed vector grass background or perhaps combing through http://www.istock.com and finding something on there. As it stands right now, I thought the site was something to do with children or kids.

Also would organize some of the content, get some more alignment going, I feel pretty crazy trying to read through it all. The left navigation bar seems badly organized, I can’t tell what’s what…it also seems a bit superfluous in some ways, perhaps you can get rid of that and integrate those links into the main content area, spread things out a bit. Feels very cramped.

The original site is definitely horrible, but in some ways I feel going for a more cleaner, less colorful and more straight-lined look is more fitting for the type of services this site is about.

[TheDoc]

I am not one to sugar coat, so bear with me.

To be perfectly honest, I really don’t see the new design as being much of an upgrade. It still looks like it was made 10 years ago, the only difference here being a little bit of transparency and rounded corners (which of course aren’t working in IE6, in fact the site is majorly broken in IE6).

Things to consider:

1. The items in the "latest news" box are very difficult to read

2. The page’s background. Oh dear. If that’s the extent of your design capabilities, just stick with a solid color.

3. Fixed height. In a perfect world where you have the exact same amount of content on every page ever made, fixed height can work. In the real world, however, fixed height just becomes an ugly mess of scroll bars. Why people continue to try and implemented it is beyond me.

You are new to web design, so I’ve overlooked some simple things like making sure images aren’t stretched, etc. One thing I have to applaud you on is the fact that you have selected a simple body text with a distinguishable link color, something most beginners don’t comprehend. I would certainly make that text darker though.

I would highly recommend you check out some CSS "Best of" Galleries, they’ll give you a great idea of what you can (and should) be doing.

[infocentre]

Ok guys – pretty hard hitting, but i respect your opinions! Thanks for the feedback

Alex

[tomwalters5678]

I agree with Luminated, the logo is kinda cheesy, also the background isn’t that appealing – have a look at the background I used on this project – http://tomsbigbox.com/alive – I think that sort of thing would work better.

[Author]

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