Tricky design. What do you think?

[keithdevon]

Hi all,

I’m working on the web site of a local arts organisation. The current site is at http://www.ruaonline.com.

The brief was to create a ‘clean’ layout; white background, grey text, minimal ‘clutter’, easy to use and no gimicky animations, and the site needs to have a CMS.

This has been a real challenge. From initial design ideas I have collaborated with the client to refine it. My recent idea is to have a grid of images randomly generated with each page load/refresh. The images are pulled from a gallery and the thumbnails are generated automatically. Clicking the thumbnails brings up a light-box gallery.

What are your thoughts on these designs?

[falkencreative]

I’m assuming these are all variations for the design of the home page… Of those, my personal preference is #1. The other two’s use of large images seems a bit distracting and pushes the actual content quite far down the page.

The only comments I have about #1 is that the logo could be a bit smaller, which would help the right area in the header feel a bit less empty, and that there seems to be a lot of unnecessary white space to the left of the "About the RUA" header. I’m all for good use of white space, but that area seems empty and it feels like there’s something missing there.

[keithdevon]

This is how the design has turned out so far.

[attachment=0]Version19-screen.jpg[/attachment]

The emphasis has been on keeping the design clean. The client didn’t want any boxes or colours.

The nav bar has been tricky. I wanted to use image replacement to align the left and right sides but the font needs to match whatever the user’s computer has installed. I moved the search bar down to the nav level and aligned it right as a compromise.

The test site is at http://www.royalulsteracademy.org

[Author]

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