My new site

[nixnerd]

Here she is:

http://joektempleton.com/

Disclosure: Some things might still change. Obviously, it’s gotta be responsive. Right now, I’d say its mildly fluid. Beyond that, the photo situation needs to be remedied for mobile and retina display.

The copy might stay the same… maybe not. And there some fine tune tweaking that needs to be done.

But for the most part… this is my site. Thoughts?

[Alen]

Top Menu : Animation doesn’t feel “snappy” to me. Feels kind of lazy, for lack of better word… and it animated weird as well… it reveals content behind instead of sliding the content down… not sure if that’s the effect you were going for. Also the hamburger icon menu is great minimalist idea but from the UX perspective writing out “menu” or “navigation” would prove to be beneficial as people can easy associate with the words and not icons. Hamburger menu might be something we are familiar with but could be little confusing for potential customers.

Above The Fold : Not sure if that image serves any purpose. It takes such big part of real estate and on top of that you don’t have something to grab viewers attention and lead the way, instead you display logo that potential customer can give two shits about.

Typography : Needs work, add some emphasis, experiment with type… don’t just settle for 3 column grid… and get to the point, many (if not all) users skim them page looking for key words to grab their attention, you need to optimize for that right from the get-go. You need to communicate you value prepositon. Saying things like

I truly have a fully loaded skill-set. I make beautiful things work beautifully.

Doesn’t really mean anything to your potential customer.

“truly have a fully loaded skill-set” – well I hope so you’re the pro, should be given

“make beautiful things work beautifully” – well of course who doesn’t make things beautiful and working…

as you can see this doesn’t actually communicate anything…

Approach it from the perspective of: How can I serve you? What problems do you need solving? How can I make your life better with super awesome website build.

Writing better = Writing less

You should focus your attention to 4 P’s…

• Promise, what are you offering (value preposition).
• Picture, detailed description of what’s offered.
• Proof, supportive evidence/reassurance.
• Push, path to conversion.

Everything else is fluff.

Overall : It’s very boring as it is now. But it’s def heading in the right direction. I’m not sure what purpose gun/airplane serve other than to show off your skills, but IMO that would be better served as separate page/section for someone to explore. Not sure of UX of that airplane, but it is pretty cool.

Hope that helps.
-Alen

[Alen]

http://ground-glass.com/youre-not-getting-paid-what-youre-worth/

Although different industry, look at the video on the bottom of that page, listen what he says about positioning. Specifically listen for buyers mentality. I don’t think your design sucks, far from it, I just think you’re message is not clear.

Think of it as elevator pitch….if one asks: What does your business do? What would your answer be? You have about 1min… go…

:)

[chrisburton]

I wouldn’t italicize the headings.

[Ed]

I don’t like the way the top menu behaves. I don’t like how the nav icon (as a personal quirk, I hate rounded corner icons because they look like hamburgers) feels like it’s just been shoved anywhere. I kind of want it to have a background or something?

There’s something about the imagery of a firearm that I don’t like. It’s a very aggressive and threatening symbol, and I would be very worried about the impression it sends. Yeah, the way it animates is cool and shows off your talent, but it’s also somewhat threatening.

It’s a bit heavy on words. Have a go at rewriting for brevity.

I like the way the email paper plane thing behaves, that’s really cool.

[chrisburton]

I forgot to mention earlier, your logo, to me, reads ‘doe’ rather than ‘Joe’. You should do a test case to see what others initially see.

[chrisburton]

I’ve done that myself (chrisburton.me) and so have other people (allisonhou.se). I don’t find it to be an issue, really.

By the way, I think a slight edit to your current logo would work. It would probably take all of a few minutes (depending if you’re a perfectionist like I am).

Edit: It seems that Allison House has updated her site a bit to remove the placeholder text she had before.

[__]

I wouldn’t have figured it out if I hadn’t already known your name was Joe, but I agree that the current logo isn’t a loss. Just tweak it to make it more “J”-like. Just a quick concept (maybe use transparency &| gradient instead of the solid gray I whipped up here):

[chrisburton]

Agreed. Although, I’d remove the gray altogether and put an angle on the end of the ‘J’.

[__]

You’re welcome. Also, the gray wasn’t actually what I was imagining; I thought some sort of fade-out effect would look cool. Just didn’t bother to crack open Inkscape.

[__]

Maybe like this

Inkscape… awesome.

It is awesome, but I wasn’t using it just then. That was kolourpaint, which is also pretty cool (for those who miss good ol’ MS Paint).

I used Corel a long time ago, but I never really got into Adobe stuff.

[__]

I would be in favor of nixing the gradient all together and just letting the J end there. But I want to ask you guys… does this logo look modern enough? I don’t know that it does.

It looks great. (I’m not sure how much more “modern” it could look, unless I seriously misunderstand the term.) What impression do you want it to convey that it’s not already?

I can’t believe people like this exist: http://www.logomoose.com/logo-design/spartan/

ha, that’s pretty neat.

[Author]

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