! 2 Sites ~

Here are two sites I have made. One is for a The Long Beach Real Estate Guide. I made it last year and I still update and maintain it.

http://www.thelongbeachguide.com

The next site I made is more recent. It is for an unsigned Hardcore Band named Four Dead Seasons.

http://www.fourdeadseasons.com


I still don’t have a portfolio site up… but I am working on it… SO…here, thake this sad face. :upset:

Just…err… tell me how much you hate them and things…

yo saru

#1
pretty neat man… simple and clean, i like that.
the text, I see that you’re using pixel font ya? the text is blurry man, you wanna play with it a bit. other than that… its cool :slight_smile: nice work

#2
the name itself sounds dark… you’re on the right track using darker color n stuff, but the overal design is not hardcore enough for a hardcore band, if u know what im saying… the site itself is quite empty, you need to fill in something… more swf, picture, text, texture or whatever… that’s my 2 cents tho.
but definitely you’re on the right track man :slight_smile: i like the font that u’r using

note: i notice that in Firefox both sites don’t show up as they do in IE, the flash stuff don’t show up.

#1: Bland, boring and the picture headers aren’t helping it out any. I’ve seen plenty of simple looking sites like yours, almost none of them (like yours) pulls it off very well.

#2: What are the border lines? Did you just take the flash brush and squigle some lines on there? Cause that is what it looks like. It needs work.

hmm.

*1

i guess the site is a real estate thing but it was hard to tell… the ‘long beach guide’ text overlaps the border which im not too keen on… i expect the nature of the site means html is used (general public access) but its a shame you dont do a flash version cos it wudnt take long and wud look a lot better…

*2 see DJ Studios above…

#1: not too bad. The colors are nice and the site looks sleek.

As said before, if those are pixel fonts, they are blurry. Put them on direct x-y coodinates and perhaps turn off the AA to clean that up. The font in the header portion of “the long beach guide” looks off. A different font could look better and add more to the design.

I think you could do a little more with the flash portion of the site(namely the header). Suggestions would be more interesting mouse rollover/outs, maybe softly mask out the photos, add a slight preloader for low bandwith users and perhaps something more interesting for “the long beach guide” to do instead of just a fade in on every page.

The rest of the site looks pretty good. A page or two of it was a little longer stretched than it needed to be, but it wasn’t a big deal.

2: I like the splash page other than the enter text at the bottom. The only question here is, “Is the splash page really neccessary?”. Perhaps you could use it to put show flyers, ect. but other than that it’s just one more click to get into the site. Consider the page user.

Once you enter the page the design is pretty nicely laid out. The white borders on the edges are certainly a bit too bright. It draws your attention away from the site and towards those silly borders. Just tone them down a bit and it’ll make a big difference.

The navigation looks cool and the brushes on the squiggly lines looks sweet. Once again, you could do a bit more with the flash in the same ways I mentioned before for the most part. Perhaps the standard flash rollovers could go to that green(or somewhere in between) instead of grey. It might make them a little easier to read on rollover. I don’t know if you purposely left it out, but you may want to add a shows page so people can know when these guys are playing.

The photos you choose for the forums and purevolume links could have been a little sleeker. The purevolume link the corners have a bad looking squiggly line thing going on(see below) but otherwise looks fine. And the forums photo you can’t really tell what’s going on. You could replace it with a nice picture of one of them playing or some kids dancing, ect.

The fonts are more legible on this site although the navigation could be a bit clearer. Once again, that’s not that big of a deal.

The only other quam I have with the site is what dj mentioned. The squiggly lines on the content section of the page. Where in the header it looks cool, the rest of them look kind of out of place or amateurish. Instead you could continue on with the idea of your splash page using swirly brushes with the dirty brush look over top of them.

The band itself isn’t too bad. The recording is a little too dirty for my tastes, but still sounds pretty good. If you’re into that kind of music check out my band in my footer. It could be something to do/check out :slight_smile:

You have a nice start on both sites. With some tweaking you could make these look really good! Keep up the good work!

Thanks a lot wanyo, your criticism was the most appreciated. I really don’t enjoy when people are just like “I don’t like it” That doesn’t help me at all. But you gave me some good tips and opened my eyes to some things.

These really are my first two sites. Both I KNOW could be better. I really didn’t have much to work with for either of them, but I know that isn’t an excuse. Thank you so much and I will remember what you said.

I am pretty new at this…btw. thx all~!

Bigest thing I think needs to be changed… the navigation for #2… it definitly doesnt jump out at you, I kinda had to look the page over a sec to find it. The less seasoned surfer might not see it for a while. Add some contrast, a flash animation anything to make it ‘pop’ and easily seen by the user.

Peace

[QUOTE=saru]Thanks a lot wanyo, your criticism was the most appreciated. I really don’t enjoy when people are just like “I don’t like it” That doesn’t help me at all. But you gave me some good tips and opened my eyes to some things.

These really are my first two sites. Both I KNOW could be better. I really didn’t have much to work with for either of them, but I know that isn’t an excuse. Thank you so much and I will remember what you said.[QUOTE]

That’s why most of the time I enjoy this forum and the critiques. Sometimes things are overlooked when you create a design. Things can be forgotten, you can overlook some key to your design or something you could do better. Then someone comes along and gets those ideas flowing. I’m really glad I could help you. I totally understand the starting small and not doing your best. You can’t push yourself too much right out of the box. You’ll burn yourself out in no time. Just keep at it and learn from things you have done right or wrong. That’s the best way to get better :slight_smile:

i like the first one… but they both still need work but thats already been said.

one thing i would say is that i find the text on the 2nd site Nav to hard to read.

GJ on #1