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I am working on this design for a client and would appreciate some constructive feedback. The URL is
http://signaturecabinetry.ibeamsolutions.com
My thoughts thus far are that I should respace the logo's on the left and clean up the contact info on the bottom... thoughts?
Thanks!
zoop
First thought: Ooh, that's red!
Second thought: Hello drop shadows.
Logos on the left look like ads or links. Their size makes them more important than the navigation itself.
You should look into making the contact info (and navigation) out of system text instead of graphics.
Don't squish the photo.
Take a look at your about page. Since it's the only one with content, it would be better to fix it early. The red part moves (as in moves over, not expands down, I mean it does that too, but that's how it's supposed to work). There are extra lines at the bottom (that look like guides). The graphics do not line up either.
Thanks for the feedback... the logo's are there per client's request and i have been lobbying to tone them down a bit. I think the best I might be able to do is to add some transparency... I might also tinker with removing the drops shadows to see if that help's. The original intention was to make them stand out so they could be clickable buttons but I have since changed directions. Additionally I think you are right; I went a little crazy with the ds's.
The gridlines are the source of the images not lining up on that page and I left those in there by mistake after some testing. They are also causing the horizontal movement that you are reporting. Good catch though, I hadn't noticed it yet.
As for the buttons, I tried making them textual but they were not clear enough (grainy) so I changed to images... any suggestions on how to make text appear clearer?
Thanks again for the input.
I would try emphasizing the company name; it blends in with the other logos. You could scale up the name on the photo with a largish type size and turn it into a focal point.
The pixel font used in the navigation is surprisingly hard to read. Did you turn off the anti-aliasing? If not you need to. Might also help to amend the gradient, it comes across as a little cheap and plasticy.
As a fundamental I would swap the positioning of logos with the countertops, hardware thumbnails etc. As DC was on about, get the order of importance right.
Bold is a much more effective way of drawing attention to titles, headings. Don't ruin things by underlining them.
Gotcha, thanks on all counts... will implement your suggestions on Monday and see how it goes. Am relativly new at this and am trying to get better... My real background is in OOP and this whole graphical design thing is coming a lot slower than I had imagined.
I think what you should also do is make your main title larger than the other logos, because it is lost when you look at it and the other logos below it. You might try a black text logo on the top of the website, with a white background. Other than that your layout looks excellent
The logo's on left side for sure got to change, cause it does look like adds; plus too much WIDE-RED space, if you dont use it to incorporate the MENU in this section, i'd make it smaller, even eliminate it and put the logos ontop of the site... The upper menu with black font need to be WHITE to stand out or create mouseover-white font; the contacts info for i.e. address and tel's need to be smaller in size.. good luck