Review: Inkblot Designs

Shouldn't this be in Website Critique Area?

No, it's okay if you just want some comments on a prototype. Could go in either section - doesn't matter to us.

This looks better than some of your past efforts. Work on your fonts, first of all. There are lots of places to get free fonts. You need to have something more original and unique for your logo fonts. Changing the fonts for that and the navigation would really add a lot to this design.

Also arrange your navigation better so it spreads across the screen and separates visually from the header. With the same fonts, same backgorund, and similar font sizes those two areas sort of blend together.

Oh, and no need to have the w3c buttons on there twice. Once is enough

Nice, original colour scheme and good "ink" concept. This might be a good place to work from.

I looked at some different fonts, and I changed the name. I'll probably find an even better one soon, but my host is down, so I can't update the page. I'll post an update as soon as I can.

I'm afraid that I have to out right refuse about spreading the navigation. I really like the way it looks. At 800x600 (which is what most of my customers will be using, I assume) it wouldn't make much difference, anyhow. I will however, find a way to seperate it more. There's some code that was supposed to move it down that I just recently fixed.

I can't put W3C buttons in the content part of the site for every page, so I decided to put them there. I doubt many of my customers will care that every page validates, so I might as well get rid of them. It has to be the same on every page for uniform look, and I'm planning on doing just the layout in a php file and do includes for all the content.

ok, for lack of php support, the site can now be found at http://madclassifieds.000k.net

new banner, added a portfolio spotlight. Still no links or home text.

To add some personality, your little inkblot needs a name. "Inky" perhaps?

I like the simple uncluttered layout and the color combo. See how it looks with the banner and nav bar centered.

I can't really center the banner... it already is. I changed it to center, and I'll leave it up to show you guys, but I really do like it at the left.

I like this a lot more than your previous efforts... It looks good and the colours work... a couple of issues i have are:
1) The "why ink it" box looks odd to me with the straight lines when everything else is curved. Is this box going to be on every page? if so I think it needs to be smaller and maybe brought off the outer edge a little bit.
2) the "ink it up" looks a bit too plain... and my eye keeps going to the ink blot as if it was the first letter... Play around with that tag line maybe use the inkblot as the first letter...?

A final thing that maybe you could consider is making the content scaleable so that it grows up to 1024x768 that will give you a bit more space but the content will stll look good at 800*600.

So far... well done buddy vast improvements.

I did have it curved for a while, but I thought that looked a bit odd. I also tried making it a box and bringing it off the border, but I decided that I would have to cut off some of the content to make it look seperate from the border. I will look into some other options though.

I'll look into the inkblot first letter thing. I may change the tag line now that it's smudge designs, but I'll still see.

I recently made a web page that was fully scale-able. liquid with negative margins, and it was more effort than it was worth. I did have some other set-backs that were very frustrating, so that may be why I speak of it so bitterly. My client base with this website is small businesses in a very small town, where no one knows much about computers. I expect that they will not be using anything larger than 1024x768, so I designed it to look good at 1024, and a bit blown up at 800x600. I may, in the future make it elastic or liquid, but for now I want the control that comes with a pixel set page.

What do you people think of the centered nav? I personally like the left aligned better.

Very cool man.

Some things I'd change -- mute the color palette a touch, if you are truly looking for that 70's "vintage" feel make sure the colors aren't too vivid, afterall we're talking about something that's over 30 years old. Making a muted palette will give more essence to the entire page, fool around with some different saturation points in the same range of hues.

Again, more with the 70's feel, perhaps change the font to cooper, or cooper black for tiltes and subtitles? Cooper was a huge 70's font.

I think you could use a bit more contrast too. Or at least another contrasting color. I love the oranges, but separate them a bit more--the design will really start to "pop".

Have you looked into the default brushes that come with Photoshop? I just installed CS today, and noticed a "ink blot" brush -- maybe something to better your logo?

Nice work

mk

I use PSP, and I really like my logo, but there is always room for improvement. I don't beleive I have cooper. could you show me what it looks like?

And (excuse my stupidity) could you be more specific on "muted"?

Muted -- greyed, tonal instead of pure hue. The site is lacking in contrast between the darkest and lightest values as well.

Ya your logo is super cool - I just thought if ya wanted to give it a bit more depth

Cooper - go to http://www.linotype.com and search "cooper" in the top left..A neat effect is to surround the letters with a thick keyline, or background.

Well I looked at both versions and I think that the second one is better: http://madclassifieds.000k.net/

Whenever I look at the splot I see a face - is that intended? If so - great! If not then it distracts me.

I think that the nav should be a little lower, smaller or both. It runs into the logo too much.

Overall I really like it!

I've tried to make the nav smaller, but I can't do so without distorting it.

A face, huh? Never seen that. Oh I see it now. Weird. I guess it could be distracting, but I'm too stuborn to change it.