Thrash my Web & Graphic Design site

[SpaciousMind]

Hi gang — I’m new to CSS-Tricks but its quickly become my new favorite site for web stuff. Cheers to Chris for all the hard work and sharing his awesome knowledge, and to whoever is helping him.

Just relaunched my web & graphic design site in WordPress (but no blog at this point yet, just using it as the CMS), of course I want to change it all around already… but don’t have time right now for a complete overhaul. Anything that can make this one better would be helpful.

It uses CSS-Tricks’ Organic Tabs on the projects page (thanks again Chris), but the slides are all the same size so I turned off the ‘pushing down’ thing. I’m not 100% happy with the look of that page at the moment, but love the tab functionality itself.

OK enough yammerin. Have at it:

http://www.spaciousmind.com

Any feedback appreciated. Please don’t be too nice or polite — the good is always cool to hear about, but especially want the bad and the ugly.

Thanks
Dave

[Lynz]

I like the bright colors overall, but I think they need to be toned down a bit. Especially the main magenta-colored area, combined with the white text, it is very hard on the eyes.

Like the overall look and feel, but honestly hate the font on your tabs (and anywhere else you use it). The "s" in particular is really funky (but not in a good way).

Good luck!

[jmorrow]

I think that the banner graphic is kind of cool in a retro 70’s type of way. I agree with the above poster that the white font with the magenta background causes eye strain.

[Historical Forums User]

Colors need to be toned down. You could also stand to increase the font size. Microfont combined with the colors hurt my precious eyes.

The background looks kind of flat, though. It focuses the content, but it kind of looks wasted.

I like the rounded, soft corners though. The header is neat, too.

[ojp3d]

Font size could be 13px or more instead of just 11px (8pt). Also try other colors for the text.

[clifference]

I agree with what the others are saying. The "s" seems rather funky – it looks unique when it’s at the end of a word "projectS", but at the beginning of a word it just looks extra awkward.

Also, the text is rather small to read. I would suggest increasing it at least 50%, and make sure you increase the line height accordingly.

Your footer is rather plain – it’s not necessarily a negative, just not a positive. It seems like just a boring repetition of the top navigation. Could make it more unique or appealing.

Perhaps it would also be informative to add what you used to do the work – xhtml? css? javascript? indesign? illustrator? I think it might help if added well, but it’s not essential.

When you click "send" for the contact us, and there is unfilled fields, a weird blank box appears along with the error message. Not sure why, but you might want to look into it.

Overall though, it’s not bad!

[SpaciousMind]

Thanks everyone for the great comments… keep em coming :)

I’d been wanting to change the logo and headings font everyone doesn’t like for a while, just hadn’t decided to what. I guess I should get on that.

Raised up the point size of the type as folks suggested.

clifference, thanks for the heads up on that form — weird behavior for sure. I just moved the site from one level deeper while I developed it, and initially the form was completely messed up (WP Contact Form 7 plugin), so I deleted and reinstalled it. Now its doing this. Ugh.

[Rob MacKay]

Hey dude welcome to the forums!

This site is refreshing. Completely refreshing. It is so nice to see something that doesn’t look like everything else. Not saying that everything else looks bad – just "done". Your retro style is strong unique and awesome.

Some of my issues:

The background colour of the main section, the pinky – I don’t like – but I feel that is my personal dislike rather than it not fitting into the scheme.

On your services page I think the text is a little squished – would be nice to see some more line-height there :D

And the contact page – I am not sure you said anything about this – but it’s a little naked lol I would love to see some of your retro love go on it :D

I love the header – and the golden curves – maybe we could see them delicately used within some parts of the main site? I think it would make the site flow from the header better.

But yea – really nice to see something different! (and funkey) :D

P.S – Apart from the occasional guest post, Chris bends the laws of time and runs the site by himself – there are some of us forum mods that lurk around, but we just combat spam really lol :)

[mfarineau]

I like the overall design of your site, although the white text with the magenta background does strain the eyes a bit much. Also, don’t forget to validate: http://validator.w3.org/
It looks like you’ve got 4 errors on your homepage at the moment.

[SpaciousMind]

@robskiwarrior
Cheers, and thanks for the suggests… working on ’em

@mfarineau

THANK YOU for pointing that out… I found a ton of errors on interior pages as well. The WordPress Disable WPAUTOP and Validation Helper plugins helped immensely.

THANKS EVERYONE

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