Web Site Design

[WoodlandStar]

I have recently re-done my web site. Woodland Star Art Studio I attempted to present my paintings in a gallery format. (Mostly cut and paste canned javascript). Let me know:

1. reaction to design (background etc.)
2. reaction to gallery format of paintings
3. make suggestions for improvement

Thanks for any help with this.
Nevyn

[Kasha]

Hi Nevyn,

I used to be a web developer. Here's some initial advice, concentrating on the way the site is organized.

Organise your menu:

Home

Paintings

Misc

About Nevyn

Contact

And slot all your links into those categories. Right now, it seems a bit confusing to me. I can't tell what the link is without clicking it. What does 'Potpourri' mean? A mix? If so substitute my suggestion of 'Misc' with Potpourri (it does sound nice actually).

Menu organization is important. Having 'about Nevyn' underneath 'oil paintings' doesn't make sense and people won't know to look there to find information about you.

The colours and design are fine, I like the gradient. Design though is secondary to functionality.

How about considering what I've written so far, then we'll work further on it. I hope you aren't insulted by my tone, I'm a direct person and tend to write this way. Good luck!!

[Ekb]

Lol for me it is always design!
My opinions:
- Hate the gradient! Not because it's a gradient, but because it detracts attention from the content - backgrounds should complement the foreground, or lead the eye to a focal point.
- Title is unoriginal - paint your own title that reflects who you are perhaps?!
- Intro paragraph is nice - the font may be nice but it's not easy to read, stick to the basics
- Where is the photograph of you?
- Don't be afraid to make your paintings big! We don't all have dial-up, or do we?
- Your blog design is great! Perhaps you should put your paintings on that also!

[ShiningLight]

Hey Nevyn,

A few things:

• dark text on dark background is hard to read.
• thumbnails are too small
• whats with the large black footer?
• Too cluttered - separate the different elements more (title, navigation, description)
• I think centered websites, or fully stretched websites are cleaner looking.

My suggestion? Use wordpress. It's free. Plus, they have a ton of good design templates. I use drupal for my site, you can check that out as well.

Great paintings btw.

[ChrisN]

Interesting

To be honest its not the best site i've seen and you could improve it quite a lot. You have mixed too many colours together and your logo is hard to understand because multiple colours were overlapped over each other.

I also agree taht your site could be centered and I recomend using a wordpress template or getting it professionally designed (not to dampen your spirits) but a first impression on a website is often a deterent for customers. Sometimes it's helpful to increase their urge to buy, so think about how its laid out carefully.

[davidrojas]

I'd like to add a few things to what's been already said. I'm just commenting on the design, although there are some other areas that need improvement.

• If you want to keep that gradient, make it more subtle. Not pure-black to white, but almost-black to dark gray.
• You use the Papyrus font. Not everybody has that font installed in their computer, so you should use a web-safe font. Georgia could work fine there.
• Change that "Woodland Star" logo, it doesn't look good at all. That blue color is too strong. The direction of the shadow should be the opposite, to match the painting thumbnail below. I would use in that logo something that relates to your "woodland" paintings. Make it brown or/and green, use some tree texture or leafs.
• The three elements on the left ("woodland star", "paintings by.." and the thubmnail) should be better aligned, centered in his block.

I hope it helps :-)