Preview Request: Free-Fonts.Net

They have: 64 posts

Joined: Oct 2002

Hi All

I Posted this a few days ago but I had to remove the thread because of server problems so here goes again:

I am working on a new site and at the moment only the homepage is working so only review that section. What do you think could be improved design wise ?

http://www.free-fonts.net

Thanks a lot

Steve

They have: 93 posts

Joined: Jun 2003

Colors and Imagry has me thinking more outdoors, army, or military, or just something covert. I don't get a feeling this site is realted to fonts. I know fonts are not much to get a feel from. But maybe include like alphabeta soup style images (meaning bunch of letters, numbers, and fonts in a unorganized fashion in the image). Right now the guy (I assume) with his arms spread out look like he ran up a mountain and claimed victory. The image with the person face with white makup (again I assume) is kind spooky and help make it feel more like a covert military style site.

Thats just my 2 cents.

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taff's picture

They have: 956 posts

Joined: Jun 2001

I would suggest offering an alternative to the alphabetical navigation - preferably by font types. Often when searching for fonts we don't always know exactly what we're looking for until we find it.

.....

They have: 64 posts

Joined: Oct 2002

Hi ShaneS

Thank you for the comments, when I working on the pre-design brainstorming I did a little research on current font sites and they all seemed to follow a trend and they were all kinda the same. I wanted something different.

The reason for this is to capture the users eye because there is HUGE competition in fonts. The guy on the mountain image is meant to be like a victory/free kind of image and the bloke below is to have a design type feel because the site is made for web designers really.

I do understand the militery type feel which you could say was planned.

Thanks again for your comments

They have: 64 posts

Joined: Oct 2002

Quote: I would suggest offering an alternative to the alphabetical navigation - preferably by font types. Often when searching for fonts we don't always know exactly what we're looking for until we find it.

Unfortunatly I find that 95% of the time it's incredibly different to categorize fonts. And trying do that users may miss fonts they would have used because of wrong categorization.

In time I will make a few standard categories so users can search by category. But all fonts will not be categorized because of the reason above.

Thanks

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

I strongly prefer font sites that sort by category. Actually, I almost always stick with sites that sort them. Most of the time, when I'm browsing for fonts, I have a fairly good idea of what type of font I'm looking for. Sorting through a big alphabetical list is a big waste of time. You could always include an "other" category, or cross-list fonts that don't clearly belong to one category. Other sites don't seem to have a big problem with this.

Overall I find this layout to be very dark and dingy. I really don't feel like staying...

Something is really wrong with your CSS - in Opera I see black text on grey (hard to read!) with upper and lower border on hover. In IE I see white text, no hover, which is much easier to read. I think this might be because you're just using :hover instead of a:hover. Try putting the a: in there and see if that helps. The body is getting that :hover selector which it shouldn't. It also might be a good idea to convert all your font styling to CSS instead of using a hybrid.

Okay, um, fonts look really terrible without anti-aliasing. I'm not attracted to download anything here because the previews look awful. Some of them are jagged, some are blurry, some are both.

When I get past all of those problems I find the layout to be quite nice. The logo could be improved (put the .net in there - people might forget that part, and try to type in .com instead). I also think that it could use more colour. The dark shades are okay looking, but they feel dingy and uninspiring. I do like the right side navigation, and the little star on the headers is a nice touch.

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