[Black Nova Designs.co.uk]

Black Nova Designs, is one of my first real designs, please can you give me some constructive Feedback please.
Would like to make this a better site and community. Please be constructive, pointing out pro's and con's not just all con's.
Thank you.

www.blacknovadesigns.co.ukwww.blacknovadesigns.com

This post has been edited by Black Nova Designs.co.uk: 02 July 2011 - 07:53 PM

[.dark .negativ .antisocial]

Ok I know it´s not the best idea to set my first post here with a critique but here I go.
Tough it comes from the heart :-)


I will not critize the design aspect. Cause it got some potential but is not good at all.

At the moment you´re working with tablets. You "just" sliced it out from PS. So that is not Webdesign.
I want to recommend you warmly to learn CSS. Don't be cross with me but you wont stand a chance with tables.
Tables are for tables and not for the design.

Start to learn something about div containers respectively HTMLtags.

If you start to read some of the thousand tuts out there you will be thrill what is possible.

Uhhh by the way. I hope your "testomonial" is not serious.

Quote

Testomonial: Thank you "Black Nova Designs" for the excellent design, it really matches the critirea that We was looking for, for the price of this is, we all said it was well under-priced!!! Its excellent, Highly Recommend!

"well under-priced" :-D

"

[Black Nova Designs.co.uk]

Thank you for the advice i will take up some of these tutorials and try to learn it if i can, also yeah they got it for a £10 thats why, so they where happy.
But yea i will try, would you be able to point me in the right direction to look?

[Matt Harrison]

Black Nova Designs.co.uk, on 03 July 2011 - 05:28 PM, said:

Thank you for the advice i will take up some of these tutorials and try to learn it if i can, also yeah they got it for a £10 thats why, so they where happy.
But yea i will try, would you be able to point me in the right direction to look?

Well, I'm not going to crit the website as such because there's too much I could say and it would be overwhelming for you. Firstly, I think it's quite a good thing that you're learning 'on the job' so to speak.

My advice would be keep going and tap into the wealth of resources out there on the web to improve your skills and eye.

It's well worth investing in a subscription to Think Vitamin and Lynda.com. Also listen to podcasts such as Boagworld to get an appreciation of UX, content, marketing and the business side.

More importantly love what you do and commit to being the best and you'll go far.

[socreative]

Black Nova Designs, has now been officially released, on to the wonderful world of the internet...

jesus...

the site looks like it was made in 2001

This post has been edited by socreative: 03 July 2011 - 06:36 PM

[OwenONeill]

Right - I'm gonna do a long post, and in my opinion list what I would change, take how you want but I'm only trying to help.

Firstly - Background, not a good idea at all to have cut randomly down, have it flow across the length of the browser, so repeat your background by the value of 'x'.

Scrap the moving images, which by the way are not a good representation of your work. It moves too quick and they are all different sizes, As I assume the default sizes are 150x150 pixels, as most thumbnails should be. Keep them as thumbnails, Me personally Im a fan of having only part of the image visible in the thumbnail so it leads the user to see the whole thing, thus upping my average time on my website by a user. Similar to this:

http://owenoneill.ne...phic-folio.html - That's my website, and my portfolio doesn't display the whole image, try that, but make sure they're all the same size, that's if you are keeping the moving images.

ALSO - Please, for the love of god do not have pixelated or out of perspective images. From a graphic designer's point of view that makes me feel a bit sick and worries me very much, NEVER squash an image, you damage its resolution too much.

Change the font, to a nice sans-serif, there a loads out there, If your doing it through photoshop then try: dafont.com, it is an amazing website and offer a wide range of fonts.

BUTTONs, In my opinion, they don't exist anymore, they did when XP were around, but underlined text at the most are the nicest way of saying 'clicking me'. You might as well make it royal blue so the whole world knows :3

But stick to simple text, nice sans-serif and DON'T center it, imagine its an online news paper, justify your text and keep them in imaginable collumns. It makes it flush and makes it all simple and easy to read for the user.

Latest News, Pictures? Not really a need, especially if you are repeating the image? Don't use the same one.

This is very simple, and my opinion, your website showcase your work should be the best work you've ever done (or close) and should take weeks of design.

Although I used to be very table orientated myself, CSS is the way forward and you can learn a lot on the internet, don't know how to do something, just type, How to change background color by CSS? How to change text alignment CSS? Google is your friend, not your enemy.

AND - Change your logo, the pixelated star is too big, if your going to use it make it very small, and have it slightly larger than the letter B, smaller, more compact, and most importantly, more iconic.

Listen to me and the others on this thread, and look around at WDF, you will learn a lot!

My opinion - back to the drawing board.

This post has been edited by OwenONeill: 03 July 2011 - 08:46 PM

[.dark .negativ .antisocial]

Matt Harrison, on 03 July 2011 - 06:19 PM, said:

More importantly love what you do and commit to being the best and you'll go far.

Nice one.

[pandadoodle]

socreative, on 03 July 2011 - 06:35 PM, said:

Black Nova Designs, has now been officially released, on to the wonderful world of the internet...

jesus...

the site looks like it was made in 2001

This is what I was thinking!!!

[Black Nova Designs.co.uk]

Okay i have done a little bit off CSS learning, rather confusing i must say, but here is a new version of the site, does this look better, and i do have to admit the CSS language is very flexible, going to look into expanding my knowledge in this area. Thank you guys for the great feedback, but can you please give me some more feedback now on this version, also please dont really focus on the template as the template is only a quick knock up till i work around CSS and learn this a little more so i can make it more approriate to what i would like.
Thank you.

Black Nova Designs.

[Matt Harrison]

Black Nova Designs.co.uk, on 05 July 2011 - 11:30 AM, said:

Okay i have done a little bit off CSS learning, rather confusing i must say, but here is a new version of the site, does this look better, and i do have to admit the CSS language is very flexible, going to look into expanding my knowledge in this area. Thank you guys for the great feedback, but can you please give me some more feedback now on this version, also please dont really focus on the template as the template is only a quick knock up till i work around CSS and learn this a little more so i can make it more approriate to what i would like.
Thank you.

Black Nova Designs.

Looks more like this side of 2000 for sure. I'd lose the hazard stripes. It says 'warning ahead', apt you might say

Also pixelated images are a no no. If those swirls are your creation, do yourself a favour and create them as vectors then save the correct size png for the placeholder.

Keep at it!

[Black Nova Designs.co.uk]

Okay i redone it again, more to my design colour as its got to fit the rest of the site, but i will get rid of the stripes if you still feel these look wrong, also the swirals will be going soon just creating the new icons to go there.

Hope you like the newer design, gone for alot simpler design.

[Matt Harrison]

You should slow right down and go back to basics. don't be implementing whole new templates daily. Work in increments, like building a house:

You start with the foundations and then the walls and add details and finishes like doorknobs later.

Get one thing wrong and everything you do later is marred. Check out out dribbble too, to see what design looks like in 2011.

[Black Nova Designs.co.uk]

Well thats not really my finished product that just something i threw together i am working on alot bigger design and taking my time to learn and advance in the aspect of CSS.
That is just a quick template for the time being of having a site there.

As i work along the new template, as i get it progressed ill upload the test version behind the main site for you to critise against before i release it.

But it will take awhile while i learn the new language.

But thank you for the heads up.

[Black Nova Designs.co.uk]

Please delete this Topic as its showing up in my SEO, please remove.
As web page is no longer anything like this original review.

Thank you.

This post has been edited by Black Nova Designs.co.uk: 05 January 2012 - 01:20 PM

[RobbieD90]

Black Nova Designs.co.uk, on 05 January 2012 - 01:19 PM, said:

Please delete this Topic as its showing up in my SEO, please remove.
As web page is no longer anything like this original review.

Thank you.

Do the mods do that?

[TheNickyYo]

It looks crap, to much black!
Start over again and you will get better!

[4colourprogress]

TheNickyYo, on 06 January 2012 - 05:12 AM, said:

It looks crap, to much black!
Start over again and you will get better!

Try to at least give some constructive feedback rather than saying it's crap, start again. I don't believe there's such a thing as "too much black" as long as the design is well thought out and has complementing colours and tones it can work just fine.