REVIEW REQUEST: www.gen1design.com

Hi

I could say more, but first you must fix the whole page....

I have never seen such poor use of screen area before....

The images are nice, and sort off a nice NAV, but other than that, needs major changes....

F!

Well, I have a different opinion (as usual). I like it alot. It is unique. Not like every other site you see. The only thing that I would suggest is to make your text just a tad bigger as well as the nav. If you make your navigation bigger it would move everything over to the left a little and get rid of some of that white space.

Maybe add some text links at the bottom of the page.??
The images that you have are nice and clean. I think you have done a nice job.

i think the first one is much better then the second one.

I liked the original better.. had a more "serious tone" to it... I think the mouseovers should show the links vertically... not horizontially... it was confusing.. as the words were placed under other headers as they appeared.

The new design... yuck... WAAAAAAAY to much white space... your eyes are drawn to the left side first when the page opens.. then you see a paragraph about somethin... then.. stuck on the right is the nav! WHAT!?! If you were selling IKEA furniture I would understand this concept... but.. well... it didnt work for me .. here. Id move the nav over or around... for a more traditional look. Not bad..Id stick with the first version... less work.

I really like this design but I would agree that it's pushed too far over to the left. It just makes the whole page seem lopsided at higher resolutions. What you could do is fix the width so that it is right aligned at 800 x 600 but centered at higher resolutions.

hmmm
IE broke on me, cant load it (not a bad thing I guess )

in Opera6 (as opera) I got a cold fusion error on the v1 page, changed to ie setting and it loaded fine.

I like them both, both are very professional

v1 is nice but I think the hand is to blurred, the thumbnail at the bottom is clearer. the navigation (with the sub sections) makes it look to busy (to many pages)

v2 could do with an extra picture at the left or even just make the text wider to full the gap

if i had to only pick one, would have to be, ummm v2 with wider text, tough decision thou. I only viewed on Opera6

congrats on a nice job

I think the most interesting thing to come out of these reviews so far is that the more senior members of these forums like the design, but the newer ones dont!

Anyway, will have to say that I like the second design too. (cant be a hypocrite now can I!) I do think it is pushed too far out however.

Both are v.good designs. From a business prespective I would have to say that v.1 is more professional ond engaging. However by making text larger etc as has been advised I think v.2 could outshine 1.

great work....

After a year of serving its clients from the local Columbia Basin Advanced Technology Center (CBAT), Gen1 is moving forward in a step to broaden its services and support to its existing clients.

Oh well I'm going to uphold detox's theory! I too like the send one, although I also like the first but have to agree that making the text slightly bigger and using up a bit more of the whitespace will make v2 even better. It's nice and refreshing to see that kind of design used.

A new idea, thought that I might be able to get away with encloseing the site with each sections theme color. Also updated the images.

http://www.gen1design.com/v2

Better?
Worse?

I appreciate your comments and time

- JN

Oh, and text still needs work... I'm lazy when it comes to editing

I still say that the text section needs to be a bit wider as I think now that it has the coloured right hand side (which looks nice) at larger resolutions it swamps the white text section. I'd also make the text a bit bigger.

I like the design. I'm actually a fan of right-side navigation but have yet to find a client that will let me do it for them. The general public seems to be convinced that the left side is the proper place for it.

The site suffers from a lack of branding. I know your logo is there but it just doesn't seem to make an impression.

Much better. (v2)

Your logo isn't very noticeable at the right-bottom corner. It also doesn't look very obviously like a nav element. Why don't you shift that over to the new left side bar?
Also, "who we are" and "about us" sound very alike to me. Maybe they could both be one page... thus, you would also avoid having to make the logo part of the nav.

I like the right side nav but I don't like how the text/buttons overflow onto a white strip from the gray strip. The squares and labels look disjoint.

One last thing. Avoid keeping your subheadings the same as your body text, with only emboldening as a difference. This is only to save you some hassles later: you may, in the future, find that you need to add bold text somewhere in body text. It will clash with the subheadings.
Point is, differentiate your headings with something like a larger font, different color and/or different font altogether. Reserve things like bold body text for bold body text etc.

:light: Why don't you do the heading/title for each page in the same color that you have for the left side bar? I think it would look nice. BTW.....I like this much better. The other one wasn't bad but this is lookin good.