point101.com

Well, it's clean possibly a little to clean. I think it could use some more work. White is not the best color to display photographs, and the "Photography" link leads to a rather strange page?. I think I feel it just needs some more color, and possibly header work; not very impressive. You also need a Doctype in the head of your page.

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your crit.

The page when you click photography needs to be worked on for sure - I had actually forgotten about this!

I appreciate your comments about it being too clean and lacking colour - but this was the intention of our initial brief. We wanted to create a site that showcases works of art with little intrusion as possible and the minimal of branding. We want to promote the work of the artists rather than the brand itself.

Kerry

That was my intention when I developed my site. To keep it simple, and non-intrusive. But I choose black, white seems to show more of an emptyness. But I fully understand your intent.

Well I like the design of the site... Another classic example of simple but effective... I like the contrast with the flash movie with the links beside an actual photo with framing link... I also like the way framing customization is made simple...
All I could suggest that you put a simple info upfront your site other than the about point101 link... So that they get what the site is about at a glance...

Hi codfather!

I like the site - and I love some of the photography featured there

I would agree with the others that it needs just a little more on the home page. Not neccessarily "branding" - I'd say just a little more of the creative element. Photography is an art form after all - so the site should say "Artsy" first off imho. But I totally agree you don't want to overwhelm the photos.

I like the way the site "feels" like a gallery. Maybe all it needs is a really emotional banner/header to grab the eye.

Selkie

Hi guys,

Thanks for your comments.

Glad you like some of the photography. Take your point about the homepage - will try and address this in a future update...

Take Care,
Kerry

codfather,
I really adore the menu system, very smooth and the icons are friendly, The site is too white, and even though you where looking for a clean look, I think it had turned out a bit stark.

Art work draws the eye and the flash on the main page caught my attention. the other pages with the left content down the side break the page nicely and give it that finishing touch, have you considered this for the landing page? even if you just run the 4 examples at the bottom on the left instead. (but hey this is just my opinion)

Else, very clean and effective, and again, love the menu!

Hey Data...

If you love the menu you can pay for it or try it out by searching for

OpenCube's NavStudio 2005

Most Popular Site uses their tech, (Microsoft, MTV, Coca Cola) and point101 ofcourse...

If you want CSS/java combination based i have one fully customizable...

demon, yes I have to upgrade my menu systems shortly (although have been putting it off) but the css java combo sounds nice. by chance would you send me the source?

much appreciated

Ill be posting one soon on my website,
ill be sending you the scripts once im sure theres no bug...

For the mean time you could try and visit http://www.dynamicdrive.com
I submitted/collaborated some early versions of the menu...

This could do with some structure, it looks a little too stark - as someone else mentioned. This seems to be because of a lack of design, the elements do not fit well together and there is no concept behind the site. It looks a little thrown-together instead of just clean.

What process did you go through to achieve this? Did you jump straight into the code for instance? This is always a bad idea - but an easy mistake to make. Draw yourself back from the design way before you even think about coding, decide what you want to do, make a rough sketch (probably scribbled on paper), then a proper proof (probably using some image-manipulation s/w e.g. Photoshop), then chop this up and use it for your design.

Stark and clean is ok, but lack of design shows... Sorry to be harsh, but I would expect the same in return!

Needs more umph ... it's a little blah ... I would add some colors of graphics to the template.

:eek: That's horribly far from what I had in mind, Flash is not accessible to all users and tends to run hideously slowly on anything but quick PC's... A big putoff for a very small gain!

It's a shame that they don't allow very much editing, you can enter your own css stylesheet, and that allows you a large amount of freedom - working upon the proviso that you're able to put hooks into the HTML (class="foo" or id="bar") etc.)

Beyond that I don't know what you can do if there isn't much scope for template editing.

I feel very guilty now, you should never be forced to use Flash in place of good design! In fact if the eCommerce system is restricting you that much perhaps ou should consider changing, exactly what will they let you do?

I tend to agree wtih jeevesbond on content being inside of the flash movie, but that said it is a nice effect, and their is lots of flash being used these days so you are only going to get a minority that cannot view it, even then the flash player downloads in minutes and most dont even know whats happening.

I think its an improvement.

The new version is quite good; only problem is if your visitor dont have flash installed they wont see the new design.
I suggest you put some link for flash download with accompanying note that the site requires flash or something. Or maybe hide underneath the flash an image incase they dont see the flash...

Thanks for your reply guys - I've improved it again! I hope. Anyway after meditating for 10 mins I came up with a new colour scheme and I have got rid of some links - made the fonts nicer in the flash movie and combined the two drop downs at the top. After a few people saying I should center the content - I did...

Think it looks better now - let me know if you think so?

Thanks people.

Kerry

That's a lot better looking - I like it!!

Still dislike the Flash though, you could do that with normal XHTML/CSS...

i like the pictures, but I personally would change the backgrounnd color or add a background pattern or something

I see the logo discussion has moved to another thread now... As for a tutorial on XHTML, well it's pretty similair to HTML as usual Google is your friend.

The point is, Flash has many bad connotations especially if you use it for content. For instance: Google won't be able to read the text inside the Flash movie.

i think you should have an intro that fades in and out artwork i think that would be cool

Nice site, very clean. I would have to agree with what others have said. The flash is not necessary. Also glad you're changing the logo. If you do end up going with a grayscale logo, I would suggest colorizing it to match the color scheme of the website.

Very nice site! Clean, simple and easy to navigate. The site design complements your business very well.

Good site with a beautiful photos and color,you should make a menu more match you page

When looking at the actual pictures, there is no "next/prev photo" links.

If you browse by 'category' then go into the image it, enlarge it, and click the picture to go back, the 'browse by' switches to artist.

On the individual pages the information dropdown goes under the frame dropdown (IE only problem).

The wall colour matcher, when a colour is 'locked' if you click on a different colour, it 'unlocks it' but it doesn't also switch to that as the hovered colour, and remains as the locked one. Also, the match colour doesn't seem to also take in account the chosen frame, plus if you've made you choices for frame/size/mount, they are lost when you go back.

I like the compare art scale page, but 2 issues. One, if you change the image size, it resets the furniture you're looking at. Two, it only does the cool float thing the first time you switch.

Overall I like it, if it's a little bit Spartan. The only thing I would advise in the design is more titling. Like the "Point 101 - Photography - by type" could easily be move more inline with the user's focus, that being on the images. Also the big 101 eye should be a link to the homepage, I've clicked on it 5 times at least out of habit, thinking it should send me to the index. Finally on the index page, the 4 (random?) images should A) be 10 not 4 B) have a main title. Even if you keep just 4, maybe throw 4 above the flash box, something like that.

Alright, that enough to keep you busy for awhile?

Seems quite professional and is a credit to the art work on display. Nice website all in all.