Website critique please

[rockymaru]

Hey, I'm a noob to these forums and could use some design help with my website template/layout. I'm more of a 3D modeler - as you will tell from the website URL - and graphic design has always been my weak point. So I would greatly appreciate any initial off-top-of-your-head feedback, and/or more in-depth critiques and comments to help display my online portfolio. Please keep in mind this is in a very rough state and is not even cut up for HTML format yet, and is about 1/4 the size of the final output.

So here are the two slightly varying design templates I have in mind:
Template A , and;
Template B

Basically, I'd like the website to look clean and elegant with a lot of emphasis on using varying shades of blue (as you can tell). My initial problem is trying to decide where the main navigation banner, and bar should be placed (i.e. should I keep the navigation buttons (Home, Portfolio, etc.) below the banner [Template A], or above [b])? I'm also considering the idea of lowering the glass/plastic navigation banner such as to make a seamless looking transition from the main banner to the navigational buttons.

Also, I could use some ideas to help make the bottom portion (news & updates), as well as the background look better.

Again, any and all ideas, suggestions, and critiques most welcome. If it requires a paint-over, so be it. Thank you.

[LeadMagnet]

Since your gallery is likely to (ideally) contain alot of images and/or large images, you can safely design the site to be much wider than you've made it.
I think the name of your site (or your own name) should be in the banner rather than only on the Home page.

I'm an impatient net user and i just wouldn't read the text you have there even once because i didn't ask for it, so move it to somewhere that people can see it if they want to see it. Otherwise it just blends into the background and goes unnoticed.

I prefer the buttons below the banner in this case i think.
Might be an interesting idea to blend the content area into the darker blue background too rather than containing everything in a rigid box. That might also look worse, i'm not sure, but give it a shot.

[rockymaru]

Originally Posted by LeadMagnet

I think the name of your site (or your own name) should be in the banner rather than only on the Home page.

Yes, I like this idea as well. However, would it be ideal to rid of the 2D drawing on the right side of the banner altogether and replace it with text of my site? Or perhaps overlay the name/URL of the site overtop everything?

I prefer the buttons below the banner in this case i think.
Might be an interesting idea to blend the content area into the darker blue background too rather than containing everything in a rigid box. That might also look worse, i'm not sure, but give it a shot.

When you say the "rigid box," and to rid of it, I assume you mean what would likely become the "TABLE" (in HTML terms), the frame with the slight emboss on it? If so, I'll def give that a look.

How do you and everyone else so far think about the small gradient on the bottom of the page where the updates would be? To me it feels like it's lacking and I can't quite put my finger on it. Perhaps a vertical border going down the side? A small frame to inlay the text? Maybe something similar to this?

kenichi nishida

Where the artist kept everything simple, and merely put the updates - and his gallery - in a dark gray framed table, underneath the text.

[LeadMagnet]

Originally Posted by rockymaru

Yes, I like this idea as well. However, would it be ideal to rid of the 2D drawing on the right side of the banner altogether and replace it with text of my site? Or perhaps overlay the name/URL of the site overtop everything?

I would suggest that if you have an idea, try it out. This is a site you'd want to keep for some time, so it's worth putting in time experimenting until you get it just right.

Originally Posted by rockymaru

When you say the "rigid box," and to rid of it, I assume you mean what would likely become the "TABLE" (in HTML terms), the frame with the slight emboss on it? If so, I'll def give that a look.

Yes, i'm talking about the embossed border around the whole thing. I should warn you, since you brought it up, that frames (although i'm not sure you were talking about HTML frames) and designs made using tables are not a great idea. If you look at Kenichi Nishida's portfolio that you showed us, the site is constructed using css. There's a table in the gallery, but it's just for the tabulated data of the thumbnails which are laid out in a grid pattern.

Originally Posted by rockymaru

How do you and everyone else so far think about the small gradient on the bottom of the page where the updates would be? To me it feels like it's lacking and I can't quite put my finger on it. Perhaps a vertical border going down the side? A small frame to inlay the text?

Don't know really. I'd probably de-saturate it at the bottom though. I don't particularly like to use strong colours much. That's just my preference though.

[rockymaru]

Thanks for the suggestions, LeadMagnet. I'll definitely take those into consideration. Otherwise, how do you feel about the overall design? What can I do to enhance it?

[rockymaru]

So I took some people's advice and decided to go wide. I also got bored of looking at the old template and decided that since we're in 2008, I'm sure more and more users, esp. potential employers, are using widescreen LCD monitors (much like myself, and other fellow artists and friends). So without further ado, here is the current template, w/o much of a body. Although I'm planning on making that using a simple table/grid.

http://www.polymodeler.com/images/te...b_Template.jpg

I'm thinking and LEANING towards making the top and bottom portions as frames (yes, HTML frames) so that if the user is not at 1680x1050, I would be able to chop up the sides in such a fashion that it would scale to fit the window of said user's browser.

Any suggestions on that idea, as well as critiques, comments, feedback, et al. overall are welcome.

[Toon]

You could use this to make the width variable

dfGrid 1.0

[rockymaru]

Wow, thanks, Toon! Unfortunately for me, though, it looks complicated when taking a look at the source and script, as I haven't done this type of HTML work before (CSS and JavaScript). How could I get this to work with my template, though? For instance, as you can see on the page you linked me to, there are 3 tables, going left-to-right. Well, my template has 3 "tables" going from top-to-bottom. What would I have to modify in the script to get that working to my liking?

[rockymaru]

So I've spent the past week chopping up my images to be HTML-ready as well as coding it all on my own. This is my first time using CSS and seems to work out pretty nicely for what I want. Here's what I have so far:

home

Note that links and other sections of the page are not published as of yet and I optimized everything for widescreen (specifically 1680x1050), although it should work and look good at 1280x1024.

Right now I could use some help as to why the design works in Firefox (2.0.0.14 to be exact), but has a ton of blank, white spaces in Internet Explorer 6 (not sure about IE7 as I have no desire to installing/upgrading it).

Design suggestions, crit's still welcome!

[shawzy85]

Looks cool, I would maybe change the font though.