http://home.comcast.net/~wickeddelight/ Same address as before, but I redid the content. Please let me know if anything looks bad: placement, colors, particular pieces of art. The writing portion of the page isn't done yet so don't bother looking at that. Thanks! [smile]

I don't know much about good website design, but here's a few things I noticed:

-first, this is small, but, to me, "go to my writing page instead" sounds like the user ended up at the wrong site and they need to click there to go to the correct place or something. To make it sound like an optional link, you could make it less commanding.

-you forgot a comma between "duplicating a line" and "changing the color" in the red paragraph

- I really like the first blue fish guy in the anthro section

-I also like the last creature in the watercolor section a lot

-However, the grid layouts of your work aren't very aesthetically pleasing themselves and don't show off your work as well as they could. For example, the rows are all different heights, and you can't always see the artwork inside each box very well. What a lot of artists do on pages I've seen is to just show a detail from their piece. Then you could make the boxes and rows all the same or similar size, with a glimpse of the artwork inside (if it's too big or detailed to show it all- I'm mainly thinking of the character portraits, which are too tall and skinny to see anything). The simple grid with plain text seems like it too could be more stylized, but that's not as big a deal (for example, not having the lines, or making the category text bigger or purtier or something, I dunno).

Hope that was helpful. Impressive site overall. I need to get me one a those.

~Waru

Just a few comments about the aesthetics. I didn't read the print.

* All black background is so 1996 geocities-ish.
* Red text on black background is nauseating
* Purple text on black background is hard to read
* I have to scroll to the right to see all your thumbnails
* Everything is on one page
* No navigation menu
* Large font is not appealing
* Large serif font is less appealing

We used to have a term for geocities pages like this in the mid 90s.

We called them center scroll fests.

IMO you need a nav bar, multiple pages, and a better color scheme.

Nice art on the page though :)

Quote: Original post by smr
* I have to scroll to the right to see all your thumbnails

That definitely shouldn't happen. Can I ask what your screen resolution is? It should work fine on screens with horiz 1024 or greater, and hopefully nobody should be using less than that these days.


I would like to point out that the previous version had a plain white background, all black text, no graphical dividers, and no tables. So personally I consider this to be progress. ;) I will certainly give serious consideration to all suggestions made for improving the page, but my my main goals are something that is low maintenance, has everything up front rather than hidden in subpages where a prospective customer might miss it, and functions as a catalog showing a potential customer all the option they can order from, without seeming crassly commercial.


I changed the link text to: (Link To My Writing And Editing Services Page) Is that better or does that make it seem like I want people to link to me from their pages? I fixed the comma. Anyone have suggestions for alternate colors rather than just not liking these? I am not going to be using a wallpaper, so if you make a recommendation for the background please suggest a solid color. I don't understand what's not attractive about a large font? (I personally have trouble reading small fonts because of my astigmatism.) The font type is just the default html font because I'm not using a stylesheet. I'll look into what other sorts of fonts are available but if I have to specify the font on every line that's too much work.

The problem I see is not the content matter, but the site. Unfortunately, it's a blast from the past in that it's very mid 90s in layout and design. It needs structure, organization, and better compliments to an artists/writers site. Since you're hosting it with Comcast, I don't know what resources you have access to (scripting languages and database technologies), so I am unable to recommend anything in regards to web design and development. At the very least, everything could be hard coded HTML, which is fine as long as you're not looking to have dynamic content (like displaying a random spotlight image, having comments added to each image, etc.). There are certain workarounds, but I don't know what you have access to.

Also, having everything on one page causes severe long load times, a big detractor to site visitors and perspective clients.

Well, it doesn't look professionaly designed. Other than that, it's ok. Probably you don't care about it looking like that, but if you do, browse other sites and steal their html source.

goodluck!

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
has everything up front rather than hidden in subpages where a prospective customer might miss it

It's not all up front. It's hidden by pages of scrolling. People expect to have to click links to view more content. That's the way websites have worked for well over a decade. As far as the look is concerned, I wouldn't expect to get too many clients as an artist with a website that looks like that. There is nothing artistic about it.

If you wanted to read why it is a bad design and what you could do to improve the design and implementation then you won't go wrong reading webstyleguide. Personally I see the uses of HCI influenced design but it is the most boring subject known to mankind.

Quote: Original post by Mathachew
Since you're hosting it with Comcast, I don't know what resources you have access to (scripting languages and database technologies), so I am unable to recommend anything in regards to web design and development. At the very least, everything could be hard coded HTML, which is fine as long as you're not looking to have dynamic content (like displaying a random spotlight image, having comments added to each image, etc.). There are certain workarounds, but I don't know what you have access to.

Yes I'm pretty much limited to html, and no I have no need for dynamic content.