Website Redesign

[philjohns]

Im looking into redesigning my website - its not a definite yet but if I can come up with a design that I love Im gunna go for it.

Ive just done this in photoshop, excuse the width of the image, just scroll so the content area is centred and let me know what you think if you could.

Ive tried to incorporate a slight hint of grungyness with a more sleek, web 2.0 style design - sounds odd but . . .

www.philjohnsimaging.co.uk/websiteredesign.gif



Thanks in advance,

Phil

[lolly]

The style looks fine to me, I'm just wondering why you have a set mind on having a centrerd white box like the last design. Have you experimented with contiuous headers and a more fit width style? Sometime the simpler the body style is the more you've got to work with. Setting a white box means the shape of the site is always going to be boxy and won't be able to vary on different pages, it adds contrainst if you get what I mean.

A few examples of what I mean:

Devlounge : Design, Develop, and Grow
Technorati: Front Page
paulbeelen.com
frilans, frilansade, Webb/Ad, webbdesinger Thomas Krajewski - Springbeat
Moderní web: top èeského a slovenského webdesignu

Once you 'box' a user in you limit what you can design with the main content, hope this makes sense.

[blueocto]

I agree with lolly; using a fixed size in the past greatly made things more restrictive and took longer to code.
Try to be more fluid with the design...

[philjohns]

Ok, point taken - I like the look it has now though so I may just make the page "extendable i.e. fit to content - is this what you mean?

Or are you suggesting that I scrap the non-repeating graphic and have it extend both ways to the size of the browser?

[Toon]

Another problem you may find when you start to add content is, because you have a gap at the top before the content box starts you're leaving minimal space to work with before the fold. Usually it's better to maximize the space above the fold as you have to interest people to make them want to scroll down.

They are good examples by lolly as everyone has main info visible before scrolling (apart from technorati which has ads). Hope this is clear enough as what you're looking to achieve.

[philjohns]

my bad toon - The blank blue space above the beggining of the grungy style ehader will be lost when coded.

What are your veiews on turning it into a flowing design then?

[Toon]

What exactly do you mean by flowing?

[philjohns]

Im actually redesigning it now, Im going for something more web 2.0 with fades and a reflection of my logo - by flowing I meant that the pages fits the content rather than the content fitting the page.

[Toon]

Look forward to seeing it. You might be interesting in this thread....

Concept...

You can both help each other along with the transition into full page sites. It's got some similar points made here.

[philjohns]

Ok, Ive done a bit more - your thoughts?

Phil Johns Imaging - Plymouth Graphic and Webdsite Design