Website 3.0 (mockup)

[Jeff Wilson]

Looking for comments on the general design/layout before I actually start developing the site. I know it's just a static mockup, but you get the idea, I think...

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/web3point01.jpg

[Jacob Leveton]

looks pretty dang good to me

[Todd Spoth]

looks like old school joshua davis work. like praystation v2 or somewhere around there. i dig it.

i think the watermarks on the photos on your website would be a little distracting, but then again im not a huge fan of watermarks to begin with.

[John Jovic]

Looks good. Ditto what Todd said about the watermarks.

JJ

[Jeff Wilson]

looks like old school joshua davis work. like praystation v2 or somewhere around there. i dig it.

i think the watermarks on the photos on your website would be a little distracting, but then again im not a huge fan of watermarks to begin with.

Thanks for the comments!

The finals wouldn't have the watermarks, those are just FPO. I'm not entirely sold on the navigation area, that is usually my weakest link. I'd like to spice up the navi with Flash, but I know next to nothing about flash. The photos will load with good old HTML so it isn't retardedly slow.

Anyone have links to any sites with interesting navi? I need some inspiration.

[John Thawley]

Couple of details I would tweak...

If you're going to stick with lowercase titles and button text, I'd go smaller so the decenders don't drop below or behind your base lines... that's not desgin... it's just bad typesetting. And, I think all of your left channel text could be 20% smaller.

I would shift the text to #FEFEFE or FDFDFD... just not quite white.. the current text looks muddy...

Finally, I would make the border around the buttons and images thinner...

I think those changes would give you a much more tailored and tighter look Overall, it is a nice look.

JT

[Todd Spoth]

I'm not entirely sold on the navigation area, that is usually my weakest link.


haha web design puns! haha:D

[Jeff Wilson]

hahaha :D :D

[Jeff Wilson]

Couple of details I would tweak...

If you're going to stick with lowercase titles and button text, I'd go smaller so the decenders don't drop below or behind your base lines... that's not desgin... it's just bad typesetting. And, I think all of your left channel text could be 20% smaller.

I would shift the text to #FEFEFE or FDFDFD... just not quite white.. the current text looks muddy...

Finally, I would make the border around the buttons and images thinner...

I think those changes would give you a much more tailored and tighter look Overall, it is a nice look.

JT

John, are you referring to the 'about' and 'buy' text?

I've been rethinking the buttons and I think I'll probably go with a borderless frosted glass sort of look. I'm going to play with it more tonight.

[John Thawley]

Both...

And by all means... go with no buttons. I think there's something to be said about the minimal vsiual of just having simple text ,,, especially a lower case non-serif font like you're using. I would go with a lighter font weight, a really light silver color and considerably smaller font size all the way around.

I recently re-did my company site.... I really strived for a minimal feel... take a look at http://www.c2group.com

JT

[Austin Langley]

Logo's great, photos are great, font choice is great, but the layout does absolutely nothing for me. I'm not a huge fan of side navigation on photography sites. With "about" and "buy" you need to move the letters up above the buttons. I'm also not feeling the left and right nav arrows.

[Jeff Wilson]

better or worse?

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/web3point02.jpg

or this:

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/web3point03.jpg

[Todd Spoth]

i mean its all your design but for me i would make those buttons way smaller. and non curved button corners. its a design flaw if you mix curved corners with non-curved IMO. good luck!

[Jeff Wilson]

is there really any such thing as a design flaw ;) :p

[Jeff Wilson]

Boring:

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/web3point04.jpg

I really hate doing navigation layouts, and it shows. :(

[John Thawley]

Jeff... go back to what you had minus the boxes.

You've got TOO MANY grays. It's becoming mud. The naviagtion layout you started with was fine... but the text was all to big.

The original was close.... the look and feel was just too muddy and sluggish. The gray presents a background that is elegant for the images. Now just add nice clean text... brighen it up..... and tighten it up.

To me, you started with an elegant simplistic theme... but then copped out and went looking for whistles and bells... the lines, the boxes, the drop shadows ... it's all gotten muddy and confused. Take away all the style embelishments.... this site should simply serve up your work. Think museum... think gallery.... clean white walls... simple, elegant.

The image is the authority... the rest should be delicate... elegant... tight.

JT

[Jeff Wilson]

yeah, I'm thinking about this too much. I'm going to put it away for a couple of days then come back to it after lots of sleep and coffee. ;)

I think the last one is a tad better than the very first one in terms of symmetry and overall layout. It's a bit more balanced, but it's still a bit disjointed and unrefined in the details. Thanks for the input and for looking.

I'm going to Starbucks....

[Jacob Leveton]

1st layout with burgundy buttons :)

[Austin Langley]

Boring:

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/web3point04.jpg

I really hate doing navigation layouts, and it shows. :(
Call me crazy, but i like this one the best. I think it could use a little more work, just not sure what, but I like it's simplicity and straight forwardness.

[Jeff Wilson]

I might be getting closer...

I put it away for a couple of days to digest the layout and I came back to it tonight to tweak a few things:

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/web3point06.jpg

[John Thawley]

If I may.... I prefer the return to simplicity.

JT

[Shane Parker]

Hey Jeff, it's looking real nice! One small suggestion; I'd highly recommend NOT putting the menu on the bottom. It's simply bad design, you want the navigation on the left or top where most users will naturally look for a menu. Bottom menus tend to get "lost", especially if a user has his/her browser shrunk down. I like the look though!

[edit] I like Thawley's idea above... works very well IMHO. Nice and simple; the links don't clutter the site (like the big image buttons do) but they're still clearly visible. Plus, they keep with the "nice-n-clean" theme you have going on.

[Jeff Wilson]

Thanks, JT, a picture is worth a thousand words. I see what you were talking about with the menu, and I can agree with that. I don't think I like the asymmetrical offset of the logo and type though. I really like the menu font you chose too, what is it?

[John Thawley]

Thanks, Jeff.

My other thought was centering the NYC Automotive Photo at the top.... leaving your "mark" where I have it and creating a horizontal plane centered off your logo. But if you're going to run two images like that, you need something to anchor the vertical image... I think your "mark" does that.

JT

Oh, helvetic nue spaced at 200% character width.

[Jeff Wilson]

Thanks, Jeff.

My other thought was centering the NYC Automotive Photo at the top.... leaving your "mark" where I have it and creating a horizontal plane centered off your logo. But if you're going to run two images like that, you need something to anchor the vertical image... I think your "mark" does that.

JT

Oh, helvetic nue spaced at 200% character width.

What I was mocking up with this was the Portfolio section which would run a series of landscape and portrait images using a nice little javascript image randomizer I use. That way it would appear to have a constantly changing series of images for people that go to the page and only click through a couple times.

The downside is that I can't be sure that a portrait image will always show up on the left. Sometimes it may be on the right and sometimes it may be two portrait or two landscape images together. That's why I had them both centered. Also, the other sections of the site will have a single content block in that center band.

[Jeff Wilson]

okay... Incorporating some of JT's ideas, and also mocked up another page:

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/web3point08a.jpg

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/web3point08b.jpg

[Mike Ditz]

Hey JT

Do they still have the Franklin Round-Up?

And JW...I sure hope that the big button looking thing in your logo does something when you click on it !

[John Thawley]

Ok... understood. Though I'd still urge you to put the mark at the top. It strikes me that your brand is the logo and the descriptor is NYC Automotive Photo. To me, having the text on top looks odd... and I fear your "logo" might fall below the fold on some screens. I like the logo/mark... but I feel pretty strongly about it remaining on top... oh, hand have it linked as a constant to the home or index page.

JT

[Jeff Wilson]

And JW...I sure hope that the big button looking thing in your logo does something when you click on it !


"Don't ever EVER push the red button!!" /Tommy Lee Jones


Seriously, here is the first of the live HTML: http://www.jw-photo.com/v3/index.html

It's nowhere near done, but you can start to see how it will actually work in action. I'm planning on actually creation two versions of the site, one for low res (1024x768) and one high res for people like me with 20"+ monitors. Both will look the same, but the 20+ will just be bigger.

That's the reason for that main splash page, the "enter" will eventually give you a choice of resolution.

JT - I'll play around with swapping the logo and tag position tomorrow. It's 2:30am and I need sleep now ;)

[Thomas Maranda]

I'm coming into the discussion a little late, but the site looks very good.