Web Interface Design

[flick]

Originally Posted by PhreaK

Not necessarily. Rather than invest time (and money) in CS3 I've put my efforts into learning my way around open source solutions, which are now at a point a becoming more than usable on a commercial / professional level. Think about it, major open source projects have hundreds of people working on them and massive communities who add even further to this collective intelligence. This allows them to grow and mature to the users requirements, rather than having the users adapt to the software. Also, due to all the code being available, if a bug is found anyone with a little coding knowledge is able to fix it and submit the changes for inclusion in the main release.

Mate I do fully and wholly agree with the whole open source movement, I use a lot of open source programs myself, and in work my entire job revolves around Bacula which is open source. What I was trying to say is that the majority of designers use expensive Adobe software because they think they can't achieve good results with the likes of The Gimp and Blender etc but the fact is that you can achieve great results as you have shown, you just need to take the time to learn (as you said) how to make that happen. Hope that makes more sense :)

[kip]

Simple is the key to layout I think, It's nice just the logo could do with a bit of work

[PhreaK]

@flick
Yeah, open source definitely seems to have a stigma about it of being for absolute geeks only etc. But as I said its now getting to a point where usability is a priority in most developments and a lot a really nice projects have started to mature nicely over the past few years. Good to hear from another open source user :) .

@kip
As I said, I'm new to the graphic design side of things. In what ways could the logo be improved?

[jeffross]

Originally Posted by flick

...the majority of designers use expensive Adobe software because they think they can't achieve good results with the likes of The Gimp and Blender etc but the fact is that you can achieve great results as you have shown, you just need to take the time to learn (as you said) how to make that happen...

That is very true. Not to change the subject, but I think it matches well with the idea that people think all they have to do to be a graphic designer is to buy CS3. I don't know how many people I know here locally that bought Photoshop, and now think they are a graphic designer. Whether it's Adobe, or wonderful open source apps, these are just tools! Learn the basics of design, learn how to use the tools, and then go for it.

ok...sorry. End of rant.

[quintana]

without a doubt, how many logo designers do you see using photoshop, sit them down on Illy and they haven't got a clue without all the effects.

[PhreaK]

Right, well I've changed a few things around and I'm starting to feel a bit happier with it overall.

To explain the interactive elements: the hand print image in the upper right will be dynamically drawn from a selection of imagery complimentary to the page topic (using gd to apply the hand print mask); the nav items will show the subtitle (as shown on 'services') on rollover; the text with the green background in the large type are links; and when you rollover a recent work polaroid it will be brought to the top of the stack.

Currently I'm not completely happy with the lower content area (just above the footer). It feels a bit bland in comparison to the rest of the design. Additionally the 'recent work' section needs a bit of tweaking / alternative way to present the info. I'm troubled here as I need a way to present both visual and aural projects, so at the moment I was planning on using the polariod style images for visual projects and a graphic of an mp3 player / headphones / speaker for aural projects.

Thanks everyone for your help so far. I'd love to love to hear some thoughts / criticisms / constructive insults for the revised design.

[flick]

i really like that hand print thing you've got going on, also nice design on that footer :)
the only bad thing i can see to say about is maybe that that green with black is a little like a gamers site or something, do you see what i mean?

[PhreaK]

Thanks flick. I know its cliché but I'm using the green and black scheme as it's an environmentally friendly (green) tech company (black), and I like the look of it :) .

[flick]

oh im not saying don't use green, i'm just saying perhaps a different green :)

[PhreaK]

No problems. I'll add it to the 'to tweak' list. Cheers.