[AJLComputers]

Hi guys and girls, I'm not a designer so I was hoping to get some tips from the pros here.

I've recently redesigned my IT support site to make it a bit more modern and colourful. Please can you let me know what you think and any improvements that you think I can make.

Thanks.

http://www.ajlcomputers.com

[Pasha4ur]

Background is boring

Try to play with lineheight and padding in text

Make a slide show bigger

This post has been edited by Pasha4ur: 19 December 2011 - 12:59 PM

[pilgrim_fgau]

I dont agree that your background is boring. I think it is rather nice.

Though maybe increase your font size, it is rather small in the main section. Maybe some more emphasis on the content headings also will help

[D.Schuster]

pilgrim_fgau, on 19 December 2011 - 01:13 PM, said:

I dont agree that your background is boring. I think it is rather nice.

Though maybe increase your font size, it is rather small in the main section. Maybe some more emphasis on the content headings also will help

the gray tones of the background are okay, the boring oldschool Microsoft blue however is a bit......well boring

it reminds me of BSOD and that's never a good think perhaps a lighter shade of blue would do the trick?

all in all solid website design, I do think that you should expand the pic slide show over the whole "blue" area

EDIT:

OH yeah just noticed that you have a sort of .....sand paper texture on the grey background maybe not the best texture choice, but it's really your choice in the end.

This post has been edited by D.Schuster: 19 December 2011 - 05:44 PM

[george.w]

I also don't agree with your background being boring at all, its fine. If your background was too busy it might take focus away from the more important parts of the site. The first things that come to mind are having your social media links on all of the pages, maybe in the footer as small buttons?
Also, I'm not too keen on the big yellow phone picture on the contact page. But other than that it looks professional, excellent job for someone who isn't a designer.

George

This post has been edited by george.w: 19 December 2011 - 06:08 PM

[Dizi]

The background noise instantly dates your website, it works ok on the nav bar at the top and the footer but on the blue and grey it just makes the site look really old.

You need to look a t the line spacing of the text as it all looks cramped together. Also everything seems disjointed as nothing is aligned with each other, the slider ends a couple of hundred pixels before the content boxes do and then the footer width is different to the content and the slider. So its like each section has been designed to look nice by itself with no consideration for what's around it.

The overall look of the site with a few tweaks would be quite nice, so it is in no way terrible, it just needs a bit more attention to detail

[AJLComputers]

Dizi, on 19 December 2011 - 06:29 PM, said:

The background noise instantly dates your website, it works ok on the nav bar at the top and the footer but on the blue and grey it just makes the site look really old.

You need to look a t the line spacing of the text as it all looks cramped together. Also everything seems disjointed as nothing is aligned with each other, the slider ends a couple of hundred pixels before the content boxes do and then the footer width is different to the content and the slider. So its like each section has been designed to look nice by itself with no consideration for what's around it.

The overall look of the site with a few tweaks would be quite nice, so it is in no way terrible, it just needs a bit more attention to detail

Thanks for all the feedback guys, I'll certainly look to sort out the word spacing and add some paragpraphs or something but what would you suggest to make the background more modern but without becoming too distracting?

This post has been edited by AJLComputers: 20 December 2011 - 10:54 AM

[D.Schuster]

AJLComputers, on 20 December 2011 - 10:53 AM, said:

Thanks for all the feedback guys, I'll certainly look to sort out the word spacing and add some paragpraphs or something but what would you suggest to make the background more modern but without becoming too distracting?

keep it grey if you wish but loose the horrible 90's texture/pattern substitute for something modern

http://webdesignledg...-for-web-design

all modern, search for more on google.

[AJLComputers]

D.Schuster, on 20 December 2011 - 11:42 AM, said:

keep it grey if you wish but loose the horrible 90's texture/pattern substitute for something modern

http://webdesignledg...-for-web-design

all modern, search for more on google.

This is the problem, I had a look through a bunch of background patterns and they all seemed to be floral or wild patterns or something that didn't really seem to fit with an IT website so I made a basic one myself just to give a bit of texture as plain grey looked really dull.

The only other thought I had was to do a lot of 1s and 0s (binary) really small but I'm not sure if that would look any better than it does now.

This post has been edited by AJLComputers: 21 December 2011 - 02:37 PM

[StuartPB]

Why not try going for solid colours and/or gradients, and not have any textures? I reckon that would work well.

This post has been edited by StuartPB: 21 December 2011 - 02:38 PM

[Malyo]

Few pointes:

- menu feels lose, it should be align to the right or left side (are you using grid 960?)

- Site feels dull, not sure why but my guess are bad color shades, for example blue and gray feels like i'm using windows 95 (background should have lighter disort)

- logo just doesn't feel right, it shouldn't be shown like that, it should be align eiter to menu section, or blue one, without this bg, and if on blue one, try white version of it

- content block look bad, mostly due to bad font pick/formatting

- footer seems really good tho

[AJLComputers]

ok, I've changed some of the text on the front page and put it in paragraphs so hopefully that makes it easier to read and looks a bit better, I've stretched the footer so now that fits in with the sizings on the rest of the page and ties it together a bit better.

Next things to do are...

1. Find a way to get the logo in the menu bar but still be big enough to stand out.
2. Once the above is done then I can stretch the Nivo Slider to fit the blue bar completely
3. Re-colour the blue bar and get the slides to match the background colour so it looks like the whole blue bar is changing.
4. Get a better image for the contact us page (dont like the yellow phone)
5. find/create a new background to make it more modern.

Anything else you can guys can think of?

Thanks again for all the feedback, nice to have someone else look over it as everyone sees things differently and to have a professional opnion helps even more.

Thanks, I owe you all a beer. :-)

[businessnet]

I think its a little cramped. You have a lot to offer and to me it looks like your trying to say exactly that! As a result its lost the clear message.

I selected the webdesign as that's my primary interest and I learnt not much more than the initial paragraphs taught me. Also the sister link is dead as the anchor links leads to

http://www.ajlcomput...tehosting.co.uk

It is a nice looking site and you clearly have talent but your message is lost in skill. You have two to three paragraphs of small font per synopsis and that is a real put off just for reading sake! I know it sounds strange but people can't be assed reading anymore!

Joel.

[D.Schuster]

AJLComputers, on 21 December 2011 - 02:30 PM, said:

This is the problem, I had a look through a bunch of background patterns and they all seemed to be floral or wild patterns or something that didn't really seem to fit with an IT website so I made a basic one myself just to give a bit of texture as plain grey looked really dull.

The only other thought I had was to do a lot of 1s and 0s (binary) really small but I'm not sure if that would look any better than it does now.

Try it!

or:

http://www.binarytur...ite-web-design/

http://bestdesignoptions.com/?p=6258

[AJLComputers]

Right, I've changed the background to have a brushed metallic look and changed the colour of the blue section to be slightly lighter. Is that less boring?

[D.Schuster]

AJLComputers, on 24 December 2011 - 09:51 PM, said:

Right, I've changed the background to have a brushed metallic look and changed the colour of the blue section to be slightly lighter. Is that less boring?

the burshed metallic texture has all the colours possible in it, it reminds me of adding noise and then stretching it out, why not go for a modern pattern? like carbon fiber pattern? spiderman pattern, a wire mesh pattern etc.

yes it does look a bit better, try changing the shade of blue tho and switch to modern patterns.