Eoin

I much prefer Bright Web Zone, there's something about E-planet Web Design I don't like...

I much prefer Bright Web Zone, there's something about E-planet Web Design I don't like...

I have too much faith in humanity to believe that your current website represents you, if it did you wouldn't have had enough of a sense of humour to chuckle at the graphic! The issue isn't with your site looking more formal than informal, as you say, if you're quite a formal guy then naturally your site should be formal. What I suppose I'm trying to get at by calling your site 'corporate', is that it doesn't really convey any sense of you as an individual, it's more like looking at a less polished version of the Halliburton site. (< Not a good thing!)
 
Take this guy's site for example:
http://www.alittlebitofsomething.co.uk/
 
This guys page has been used by others on here as an example in the past, but it's a good example of a personal site because you know exactly what to expect by ordering a site from this guy. i.e. It's likely to be a creatively designed site, you have a good idea of cost, as a client you know your place in relation to the designer, and the guys personality comes across in bucket-loads.
 
I'm not proposing that you copy this guys site, that would be ridiculous, I'm just proposing that you take from it the importance of selling the self-employed persons sole asset - themselves. How you wish to present yourself is the determining factor in how your site should be designed, take your question for instance:
 
 
Every type of font, whether it be serif, or sans serif or script says something about you. Generally speaking, a serif font says 'traditional' and a sans-serif font says 'modern'. If you want your site to look more soft and appealing, yet at the same time formal, then you're really crying out for a serif font, but because your accompanying text is quite small, with your current design you'd probably need to restrict the serif to headers and use sans-serif for the paragraphs. That restricts your choices quite considerably because in order to 'match' a serif and a sans-serif font they can't (at least with your objectives) be very different from each other. That means you've not got a whole lot of choice but going for something like Georgia for headers & Arial for text if you're restricting yourself to web-safe fonts. (There are dozens of other combinations of course using @fontface, but even then you don't really have the option of using a really 'mellow' serif font on your site because of the layout.)
 
Eoin

Sanygeek's given the ideal answer which would apply in 90% of cases, but if you can't compromise on image quality (e.g. photography website) even for users viewing at high resolutions, (or conversely want to really streamline for people viewing on mobiles) you can use media queries to establish the users screen resolution and send different background images for different screen sizes depending on the user. That way you could have several versions of the same image across various resolutions.
 
See:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/introducing-media-queries.html

Elite has given a far more thorough answer than I ever could, but if you're looking for more info look up 'parallax web design' or something similar on google.

I think Charlie Brooker deserves his say. (Sure it's about advertising not web design, but I think the parallels are clear!)
 

Yeah, best to read only the actual specs.
 
 
Thought the spam had been quiet on here lately...

/head in no hands
 
Speaking of spam. I've been getting frequent emails through from a Chinese guy offering various photo editing services.
 
The first time I politely asked him not to email me again.
The second time I RAISED MY VOICE.
The third time I accepted his offer, and asked him to give me an example of his work, but sending the most ridiculous photo I could find in my photo library and have him cut it out.
 
Thanks 'Rick', you did a smashing job!
 
See attached file.

@ Mike - Yes, three cheers for Charlie!
 
@ banksy - I reckon the women are just experiencing cognitive dissonance because they can't have us
 
@ Dizi - Do you think like Schroedingers Cat that that something can simultaneously be art and not be art? For example, if we were to take Andres Serrano's famous work, "p*** Christ" (I urge anyone unfamiliar to google it), certain proportions of the population will find it heinously offensive worthy of violence, and certain others (with maturity of my level) will find it uproariously funny with enough of a serious point behind it to call it art. Is it hence both art and not art simultaneously? Or do we say one side is right and the other wrong?

fascinating.

Is this in bad taste?

It looks more like an e-mail newsletter I would receive rather than a website.
Im not sure why you have got "pictures of the royals" and then "more pictures of the royals", just have "The Royals" then you can have their articles and pictures all in one place.
Also, if you look at any news websites, they have an article headline with a picture then maybe a small summary. It looks like you have two full stories there. Think about just having small snippets for each story.
Your design overall is also quite boring, I think if I had gone on to your site as it is now, I wouldn't return the next day. It consists of a big block of colour at the top with some pixilated text, then a block of colour at the moment. Take a look at some inspiration online and see how to create a professional minimal design if that is what you are looking for.

I meant the header area. Where your logo is. When i visit online news sites etc. I prefer the a clean look that doesn't have too much going on and with good layout and nice readable typography.