current web project critique

[shamai]

what do you think?
http://baseshamai.deviantart.com/art/Screen-Shot-2013-02-24-at-8-12-54-PM-356295123
and
http://baseshamai.deviantart.com/art/Screen-Shot-2013-02-24-at-8-13-23-PM-356295737

its a website for a small community. where it has everything.
the community already has their own newspapers and cute magazines. I felt a website would be a great hit.

[shamai]

are they that bad that we are running away from this thread?!

[chrisburton]

With all due respect, I’m not sure what to critique. You have some text and 4 icons.

[shamai]

the design direction. do the colors work well?
the second link has the main blog page… or at least most of it

[chrisburton]

I’m not a fan of the color choices here. The green reminds me of the green slime from Nickelodeon.

Why not try a color palette resource like http://kuler.adobe.com?

[tomrogers123]

I really like the large icons as these will be great calls to action on touch devices – where the input method is far less precise than a mouse cursor. I also dig the graphic used to label the search input for purely visual reason. The gradients could be a little more chilled out though.

If I were to offer some general advice, I’d say that perhaps the reason this is a little tough to critique is that there isn’t that much true content and it’s just a static image so we can’t really asses how well any interactions might behave. Any chance of a web-ready mockup?

[shamai]

not yet. I like to design it as much as possible b4 i dive in because otherwise I never return to photoshop and I css it as I go along….

[shamai]

@chrisburton oh my gosh I remember that show!
yeah i was afraid my green was too mucusy… maybe I will change the shade of color

[Paulie_D]

I like the green.

Sorry! :)

[shamai]

someone mentioned too much gradients. so I tried to change it a bit.
which article do you like better? top or bottom?

http://baseshamai.deviantart.com/art/Screen-Shot-2013-02-25-at-12-05-15-PM-356392219

or maybe even both? i can alternate.
in fact i believe wordpress places a class on every other just for that.

[tomrogers123]

I think that’s better (a little simpler) and I reckon you should stick with dark specifically for the gradients, rather than the sandy option. It works well as a complementary contrasting colour though (as in the sidebar).

[shamai]

so i should get rid of the sandy looking article? keep it black?

[chrisburton]

I’m not seeing any consistency with the colors. I feel like you’re changing them because of the suggestions above. That’s just my opinion, as a designer.

[tomrogers123]

> so i should get rid of the sandy looking article? keep it black?

That’s still kinda my gut advice. Take that with a pinch of salt though as I am by no means anything of a visual designer so @chrisburton could be right.

Just my gut reaction when I opened the page.

[chrisburton]

Doesn’t necessarily mean I’m correct. It’s just what I see when looking at the screenshots.

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