Review Request : Innovation Web Design

Welcome to TWF and thanks for reviewing some of the other sites. Why not stop by the Introductions section and tell us a bit more about yourself

As a website design company I would certainly expect you to have your own domain name and use a proper email address and not a yahoo one.

Stylistically the site is nice graphically but very dull being all in grey. I don't know what the themes drop down is supposed to do but changing the drop down doesn't do anything ???

I don't particularly like the iframe as it makes scrolling awkward and I think it would be much better to make the design felxible so you can fit it all there and have one scroll on the far right, there isn't that much more info that's not seen straight off, plus for a company who says they have an expert SEO this doesn't really help with your own SEO.

Good start though

Hi, thanks for the comments!

I have a domain and email ready, thats just while i've been showing people it. The other themes are still being done at the moment but that drop down list will change them. the site hasn't been optimized for search engines yet, cos its the last thing i'll do. And i'm not the SEO expert btw i also don't think its VERY dull, just a bit dull i'll take on board your comments though

From what you have on your site it makes it sound like you are an expert SEO as that's what it says! I'll be interested to see how you do optimise it 'at the end' as IME you need to optimise the site as you build it!!

It's best if you don't quote whole posts otherwise the threads get too long!

Carry on with your reviews of the other sites

what i meant was its not me who is the SEO - theres another guy working with me. He hasn't even seen it yet, this site i made. That version isn't the newest and there have been changes - META tags added and content added inside a tag for the index. I dunno what else to do myself.

Sorry for quoting the whole post

I think you should get rid of the light gray strip across the top and make the rollover color of the buttons the same orange color that you are using for some of the text.

Also, the yahoo and hotmail addresses that you have at the top look rather amateurish for a web design company. Use your domain email.

Nice graphic work.

Sonia

Quote: Originally posted by disaster-master
I think you should get rid of the light gray strip across the top and make the rollover color of the buttons the same orange color that you are using for some of the text.

Also, the yahoo and hotmail addresses that you have at the top look rather amateurish for a web design company. Use your domain email.

Nice graphic work.

Sonia

I know, i will be changing the email and MSN names on the site, as i said above

The light grey strip was gonna be used for something but I didn't bother in the end, so yeah I guess it can go.

Thanks!

UMM, I checked your site in mozilla and the iframe section is just a big blur and it's trying to save frame_intro.php.exe to my computer

are the themes meant to be working? doesnt work in mozilla or ie5

I like greys but think this might be a lil to grey, maybe bring it all up a shade or introduce another colour, that little spot of green by the online stands out, try that for headings or something.

mozilla sometimes shows the iframe other times tries to download that .exe file.
what color background is your iframe meant to be (to lazy to look), it's white in mozilla but grey (deafault) in IE. you also have zero margins in mozilla. looking at your code I'd say you have some CSS issues. you have a linked style sheet as well as inline styles (using linked and inline on things), I didnt check your .css file but it could be conflicting stuff.

Those squares (bottom left) are a little confusing, looks like its more pages as you have red and green spots on them

your contact page is a 404 as well

Yeah, thats cos for some reason I saved it as a PHP file. But it displays ok in internet explorer, anyway.

The themes are not meant to work yet as I'm still working on them.

Yeah agree its too grey, but its not completely finished yet, i just wanted feedback as it was.

The iFrame is a tranparent background.

Sorry about the CSS issues,as well.

You are the first person on comment on the bottom parts looking like links though.

Contact page isn't up yet...

It looks like it's been done by some people I know over the internet who are hackers since it's quite a dark site - add more "light" to it

One thing you might want to know:
Curves and/or Ellipses <- don't know how to spell it are very pleasing to the eye, so you might want to add a few [more] curves on the site since it looks incredibly boxy (and the fact that it's an absolute width doesn't help either...)

Quote: the fact that it's an absolute width doesn't help either...

I don't think that maters cos of the size of the site itself - its not too wide on 800x600 - and i am not designing it for 640x480 - cos about 0.1% of people use it.

I'm doing a new design anyway now, cos thats being universally panned

Well I decided to redesign it, i've only put the one page up for now - and there is some more to add to it. Just let me know your thoughts. Thanks.

Innovation Design 2

I quite like this one

I would actually have the links on the main navigation change to a different colour other than blue to spice it up a little bit.

The only other thing it that at larger resolutions the main section is wider than the top header section and it seems to be shifting right as a blue line appears to the left on the white part.

Ah thanks for that, i didn't notice it I must say, you're very thorough

About the link hover, yeah I think i will make it a more exciting colour - i seem to be having a love affair with blue at the moment!

Thanks

I liked the other layout but this one is more pratical.

I'd be inclined to underline the links in the page (no underline on hover)
You should consider changing the section header from graphics to headings (h1, h2), used with keywords would help with search engine ranking.
There is a slight bump in the layout (in Mozilla) to the left of portfolio could be your linked CSS fighting with your HTML as you have font size small, font size 2 and font size 11px in one line. get rid of all your font tags and use CSS for stuff like that, even NS4.* can handle it all.

Yup, I agree that while the original is rather "kewl", this second one is much more professional. Depends on your target audience. You probably *could* use a second colour in there but I'm not one to complain about monocolour sites

Nothing else to add except that the bug Julia points out is a big one and pretty much spoils the site at higher res.

Quote: Originally posted by taff

Nothing else to add except that the bug Julia points out is a big one and pretty much spoils the site at higher res.

That should be fixed now, can someone check plz

Link

OK Fatal first post a Newbie is gonna disagree with a veteran. Sorry, sucker for a bad reputation.

But I totally disagree with BUSY. Replacing the graphic Titles with H1 or H2 tags is a bad idea. This site needs to scream Professionalism and style - Its a Web Design Agency Site.

Even with CSS Hx tags still look awful compared to graphics. And with 60 million web design agencies out there you really think Innovation is gonna top the google search results???? Forget it!

Make the site look smart, and look at more realistic ways of promoting your site online. This is a showcase of design not an attempt at SEO.

I think if you replace H1 with graphics text and then add text into the ALT command, that is basically the same as H1 titles (search engine wise)

Well, as I was bored today (mates didn't wanna go and get drunk lol) I made this little design which i might use, dunno yet :

http://innov8.sortedsites.com/concept2

Thoughts?

Erm, not to be cruel or anything, but the second one had nothing innovative about it, considering the name is 'innovation design studio', I would have expected a lot more spunk and punch in the design.

The last one you posted with the dolphin shows promise. The dolphin and water elements are adding dynamic elements to the design. The horizontal top bar adds a strong header without diluting the look. See if you can add something to the lower row in the header - right aligned (those fading squares you have now on v2, just smaller might work). The defined content area is better, giving you ample room to add thumbnails leading to a good size screen shot and text per project.

My gripe centers around the nav. It is too plain and boring. It needs sprucing up. The blue fading bars do not help, only weight it down. Get creative, do not think traditional. Maybe add a rounded rectangle around the nav (with only the right side rounded) and bring the text in closer together, add a 40% opacity white fill with blue text. Maybe have a thin line between words to seperate them.

Come up with a nice bg repeating file, say small (5x5) rounded octogones, and it should look pretty nice.

Oh, and round off the corners of the outer box, to keep the soft theme thru-out.

hey thanks for the feedback.

I know the second one isn't very innovation, hence the new one being made.

The dolphin one, it was basically something I was messing with and it started to look good so I just threw a nav on there, obviously i'm going to improve that - i agree it doesn't look right.

The suggestion you have made regarding it though, i don't think that is also breaking away from the 'traditional' style really either, i'll have a good play about on Sunday, maybe come up with something better.

The second design I'd made, i just wasn't happy with it at all, everyone else wanted to keep it, but I couldn't bear to look at it to be honest. There was something not right about it.