REVIEW REQUEST: Hillustration Studios

Hi Hilary, welcome to TWF and thanks for reviewing some other sites

It's a little confusing what your site title (banner) is, the evil weevil stands out more, even thou you have your logo on your site 3 times.
I think the Illustration Directory under the main content on the first page needs it's own page, it's just there and could be easily missed.
Some of your mouseovers on the illustration pages look a bit distorted (duck), are they the same size?
The mouseover logo (left side) is a nice touch but maybe have it coloured on normal and b&w on mouserover? (its your choice)
the white links on purple get a little hard on the eyes after a while.
Last thing when viewing the illustrations I was kinda expecting the 'next' and 'back' links would take me through all the pages instead of just going back and forwards in that section.
keep up the good work

Hi Hilary,

I've seen this site before, have you posted it on here under a differet user name?

I get a horizontal scrollbar at 800*600 due to the fact you have not set the margins to 0, used a table width of 760 pixels and have cell spacing & padding.

I agree with the points Busy made but all in all I like this site, although I don't like the red links on hover, they don't go with the purple!

Thanks for the reviews. It is possible I listed my old website here several years ago, but I am positive the new design wasn't posted here. I only completed it about two weeks ago. I really like the idea of having the logo start in color and then roll to black (or maybe a different color version). I will also definately take a look at reducing the margins to keep the horizontal scroll bar away. What screen res was the scroll bar appearing for?

it's pretty cool. I like the colours and your images are all nicely optimised. Nice.

The only thing I don't like are when you go to pages that have examples of images on, you get a tiny little segment of the image and a link to the full pic. Maybe I'm just lazy (most web users are ) but I think theres a bit too much clicking required to see the examples. Also people who don't have brilliant eyesight might find it a bit hard to make out whats in those little boxes.

Apart from that, its great! (I've added your site to my faves, and I may consider you for a future product).

I was getting a horizontal scrollbar at 800*600.

I know I'd seen your images before

I didn't get a scroll bar at 800x600 on firebird browser - weird

What is the firebird browser?

Mozilla.org Firebird "why to"

It's the new snazzy super fast version of Mozilla...

Cute! Right away I get a good impression of who you are and what you do. i agree about the illustration directory, although you could try moving that up to the main content area and rearranging the existing sections. I am a little confused as to what the navigation path should be. Should I use the directory? The top navbar? What about those links on the left? And how do those links on the left relate to the illustration directory below it? I'm also a little confused as to the purpose of the orange bar on the side. It looks good but could probably be used for a better purpose.

I am finding the text on here to be rather small and hard to read.

Overall your main problems are with navigation and usability. I'm finding it difficult to get around and figure out where I am within the site. Make sure you have clear titles on every page and try to avoid unnecessary information. (i.e. the "To see how much your custom project will cost...." bit seems to appear on every page. I am wonering if that's necessary since it's distracting me from he regular content).

Hi guys/gals!

I just posted a major revison based on most of your suggestions. What do you think?

Good job! I'm finding it much easier to navigate now, although the text is too small to read comfortably so that's making things a little difficult.

I would also like to see a little more colour in the design. Maybe backgrounds for the header and fotter area, and/or a page background colour in a more toned down shade.

I'm really inmpressed with your work here, it all looks really good.

Very nice! I know that I looked at this earlier but don't exactly remember what needed tweaking. Everything looks good now though although I agree with Megan on the font size. Perhaps 12px on the content and 10px on the footers rather than 11px throughout?

Personally, I'm fine with the colour scheme - Subtle yet offset by the colourful illustrations.

One thing I don't like is your previous/next subnav for the portfolio sections. I like to see that fixed in place so that I can click and cycle my way through the images without being distracted by tracking down where the buttons have moved to.

Hi Hilary

I really like your site, it's one of the better ones I've seen, presentable, clean feel to it and showing your design work to its full potential.

I'm one of those people that like to see a home button on a website, as I notice when you click on the about us link it takes you away from your first page and to return to that page you have to re-enter your url. (or keep clicking back until you reach that page).

At the moment your link from your first page to the Illustration Gallery is not working. Also I would prefer it to be much more clearer that I am looking at the specialties section as opposed to the Gallery section.

I don't get a horizontal bar using IE 6.0 at 800 x 600

Steve

I have to say that I like the look of this site. It's very clean and organized. I didn't read through all the posts, so I'm sorry if I sound a bit redundant.

It's built well, validates for CSS, but there are a few errors for the HTML. You can check them out here W3C Validator

I like the logo (very original and professional) and the way it changes color on mouse over.

The only thing I thought may help is the gallery section. It looks good now, but personally, I think it would look cool if the links were bottom aligned with the images and they had a 1px white border around them (the images) that hovered blue on mouse over. Just a thought.

Great job!