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Home Forums Other Website launched…Any thoughts? Re: Website launched…Any thoughts?

#72821
Luminated
Member

I guess I will have to break with the majority here and say I’m not sure I dig it. It’s clear you have artistic ability and you know your graphic design programs, but I found the site’s organization to lack intuitiveness and was really hard for me to navigate. Many pages, such as the Services -> Design pages were not only lacking any substance or content, but felt really cluttered overall. Did I really need a dropdown that every item I clicked basically returns the same page with a link to a contact form? All your Design services could all easily be consolidated onto a single page and you would even have enough room to put a secondary small contact form onto the page itself!

And along those lines, personally, I don’t think any good web design needs a sign with an arrow that says “I’m a link!” It should be intuitive in nature. This is obviously an important call to action and there are far more creative and effective ways to get people to know to click that important link than that.

You do this across the site in a few places actually, even to be as crass as using a 28px header that says “CLICK HERE!” on your Portfolio. Once again, this should be designed to be more intuitive to where the user doesn’t need to read to know what to do. That, and it really uglifies the experience overall.

Code wise, you seem to be suffering from ‘divitis.’ Many elements you have wrapped in divs (such as the aforementioned link to your photography portfolio) could easily be styled with inline classes using display:block and you would be able to really reduce the amount of code you are doing.

And lastly, the footer makes absolutely no sense to me. What does the plate have to do with your branding which is ‘struck a nerve?’ Things like the “I’m a link” sign and this lead me to believe these were implemented just to appear to be on the edge of ‘web trends’, even though they don’t fit contextually within the design.

I would really seriously consider hiring a copywriter. This isn’t a personal attack though; almost ALL freelancers write their own copy but this isn’t a good thing. I think the site overall really needs a professional touch to the copy and a hefty amount of re-organization. Just a small example: the entire website copy is written from a first person perspective (I do, I can help, I create, etc..), yet your About page is written in THIRD person (Michael is…etc..). This is a bit schizophrenic and the lack of consistency is what I come away with…and that’s not what a good designer wants to convey.

I don’t want to be a total negative nelly so I will say that I dig your colors & textures and I think you’ve done some really fine work (LOVE the beer label). I just feel that “less is more” and there is a lot of superfluous elements in the design overall.