LadyRuby

Okay, in my previous place of employment, my boss and our clients utilized the same basic idea of the following: Header at the top, navigation on the left/right, content beside it, footer at the bottom. But now that I am doing my own work, I feel that my mind has become stuck to that same outline. I can't seem to break away from it no matter how many sites I've seen thus far. I don't want my hard work to look like a template simply because it follows that very common layout. Any sites that might have helped you? Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Thanks a lot for the input. It is much appreciated!

I definitely recommend Inkscape as well. I used to use Illustrator at work, but a lot of the navigation annoyed me. Inkscape is free and works better IMO.

Since I don't have a lot to show from my previous employment(most of the work was for private sites that I can't show), I have been designing pages for my portfolio. My only trouble is, once the layout is designed, what is the best kind of filler text to use? It's easy for kiddie sites as I can make things up, but when it comes to something like a store or business layout...what do you do? I'm not very versed in writing fake text that will be presentable to my clients, so any ideas?

Thanks for your input. That can be changed pretty easily. Thank you for the compliment. Do you have any suggestions on how to make it look less like a template? It was designed from scratch so that's definitely not the impression I want to give. Thanks. Any ideas on how I can make the menu less empty? I was thinking about having an update box there. Also, the text is too bright? Hm...maybe I can make it a beige color. Thank you!

Thanks to everyone who gave me a critique on my last website design. I took a lot of the advice and redesigned it. deannabelle.com Check it out!

Thank you! Oh man...I had not thought about that. I think this idea would be a nice enhancement. Wow, thanks everyone. If you have any more ideas, I would be happy to hear them. I feel the gears in my head turning.

Wow, thank you for the links. I will certainly take these into account as well as your ideas for updating the site for a more personal, unique portfolio. I hadn't thought of using her as a mascot for my professional work. Thank you for taking the time to move things around to show me. That actually looks a bit similar to the redesign I was working on, but your idea is much brighter. I'll keep this in mind. I agree.

Have you heard of What The Font? Excellent place to help one identify a font from a graphic. It doesn't pick up on all, but it does for most.

Welcome to the forums!

I don't know about getting box2 to overlap box1, but I can help you with stopping the height from changing on box1. Use overflow:hidden. The box will stay the same height, but as the box's width reduces, it will drop and chop the text off and out of visiblity. You could add min-width:300px; for example to stop box1 from being squished to far. Of course, change the number to your needs. Hope this helps.

Nice idea you have there. I would add some more color to it and perhaps some text to let people know where the icons go. Maybe a rollover? Besides that, I like the design. It's simple and without clutter.

I can definitely see that now. It does look bland. Thank you very much for your input. Thanks for noting about the navigation in IE8. I don't think I've downloaded it yet as I was afraid that it would show too many fixes and I wouldn't be able to see what didn't work in the older versions. Also, that note on the site being too dark, that gives me something to check out. My monitor is really bright so I need to remember that and check it on my laptop as well. Good point. I appreciate the ideas, they will be taken in my update. Thank you. I may not keep them there for long, I put them there to impress a particular client. Which brings me to think that I need to work on focusing on the audience I'd like to attract. Thank you

Thanks everyone for the responses and advice. Something seemed not right and the strange response I got confirmed that. It was basically "My designer quit. This was all a test to see if I could find a good designer and you were on the list, but not hading over the files is going to mess that up...it's for archival purposes and you should have stated that final files meant only those for the web... my designers might need to change things in the future if you're not around." I've also commissioned artists in the past for hundreds of pieces of artwork and never did I once consider asking them for their layered PSD files. In my opinion that's plain rude. Of course I want to have a size big enough for print, but layered for a web design? I ended up sending a PDF of the flattened version, apologized for any inconvenience and will move on. Oh well. You learn right? Glad this is happening now and not later. I'm just glad I've been paid. Thanks again.

That's a funny reply. I wish I could use it, but I know it would be lying. My website boasts the amount of years I have in using it, so I'm screwed at saying such a thing. I did a little more research on the subject and many people had different views on the matter. But since my contract specifically said that my client was paying for a single page and the necessary HTML and CSS files that made it viewable on the web, I offered it to him for a price. I worked in a sign shop and saw many Photoshop files redesigned poorly, making the original designer look bad. Other times, they blatantly used the files for creating whole new sites for cheap. I know that's what's going to happen with mine. I want to get paid for the additional usage at least and I've already updated my contract for future clients to keep this from happening again. I learned something new already.