tcd_ipswich

Oh to be so talented................................. Do you know what I think is really great? With all those complicated graphics they have still kept the navigation easy to use and understand and text when presented is easy to read. So many 'clever' sites forget these basics. I've gone a bit green with envy.

Not obvious at all!!! Needs to be several times bigger, currently blends into the background far too much. Fabadabadusie site though!!!!

Absolutely love it, great warm happy colours! I think the logo looks a bit disjointed up there on its own. Logo looks good though!

I vote for bottom left!

its a nice design, give it a little room to breathe with padding at the top and it would site better on the screen.

Return to a black outline on the eyes and give him funny feet and its fantastic!

I like the second better than the first, good idea to dress the ! up. It also brings some additional colour to the logo.

There is no doubt that the new versions look more 'logo' like and modern but I think you had something putting the smiling face in the original. If the site is about humour having a laughing face as part of the logo really personalises it. After all the site is about people enjoying themselves. Can you stylise the 'C' into a funny character?

I'm glad you think its a good idea Brendan, thanks. I have set myself a little challenge for a new template to create by Xmas. A funky page style that is interesting and detailed that uses CSS only, no images or graphics. Just plain ans simple colour and creativity. Just getting started and its a real test of CSS knowledge and I already see how much I'll learn from the process. I will post it for review when its finished, I hope all your re-designs are going well. Tracy

Any design can be sorted out, seems a shame when you have come this far so well to hand it over though.

Seems my idea is sort of out there already, Goodwill Gallery. Not a bad site to offer your services on if your looking for work to pad out your portfolio.

This is such a good idea guys, inspired. Good luck with the re-designing. One suggestion for an ongoing motivation exercise. Why not have a template theme of the month competition? Each member wishing to participate creates a working template on the chosen theme and all members vote for a winner at the end of the month. The winner chooses the theme for the following month? I like the idea of helping charities with their sites. Maybe thats and idea for a new site linking newbe designers with organisations looking for free services? Maybe I'll have a go at that for us! Tracy

Welcome, thanks for sharing your first site. It has a real sleek look to it, I like it. Look under the bonnet however (no pun intended) and its all a bit messy. If your just getting to grips with HTML/CSS this is to be expected. It seems that you have taken a number of (large) images and placed them in exact positions on the page. One image is 1024px wide on its own. As anth says the average screen size is 1024x 768 so I generally avoid going wider than 900px to 950px for the total page width. Looking at the source code you are missing out on title, description and key word head tags, to mention a few. I also agree that the style CSS needs to be in a separate file. I really don't like anything that flashes, scrolls or generally screams for my attention and I think most people click away from a site because of these things. You obviously have an eye for design and layout. I know its frustrating (hated it myself) but I think you need to take a step back, get an understanding of HTML/CSS and look at this with fresh eyes then.

Chrome too, shame. Seems to be happening more often, strange?

I'm not a great fan of 'dark' web sites but yours works, looks slick. As to replacing the images, replace them with strong coloured created images to help show case your logo design skills. Keeping it funky means it wont really matter what symbols or shapes they are. We don't all have to have a telephone for 'contact us'! PS you are gonna get a lot of spam problems putting your email on the site, why not use a form?