Hey Everyone, Well I decided that my personal site, jakeboyles.com , needs to be re-designed, so I have started playing with ideas and have come up with this , its still in the very early stages or design but I just wanted to get some opinions. My logo is gonna be in the top left, the content is gonna be to the left of the notepad and the sidebar is gonna be in the notepad, and there will be a footer not sure what yet. Also the header may not repeat on large moniters. Thanks Guys, Jake

 

The link is www.jakeboyles.com/re-design

Like what I see so far! But hey it's your playground so go with the flow and wherever it takes you

Yeah, just go nuts and try things out. For me I'm so over the wood effect! You could try something a bit different like having your desk look over the edge of a waterfall, or the edge of the world into space or down into some complex machinery or something. Or make your desk the side of a cow or whatever just to make it surprising and memorable - how about have each page with a crazy 'desktop theme' and make your hook something like "one desk - endless possibilities".

But I too like the look so far these are just my coffee-fuelled ramblings!!!!

Lol, i like the cow idea, ill try it, but I am not a graphic artist lol I can only draw stick people so if its any more complex than that im screwed. Anyone have ideas for the nav? Its gonna go under the header. I was thinking maybe like a hanging sign or something

I was trying to do a desk effect awhile back http://darknotes.net/darknotes.png If you want, feel free to steal any ideas...if there are any

Ok, Thanks. Hey whats going with love 2 embed?

Anyone have ideas for the nav?

 

With what you've got so far have you thought about making the nav like the little coloured post-it notes - white, pink, blue, purple and yellow sort of just stuck on the edge of the header? Or like those smaller post-it thingies for marking pages in books.

Lol I was just thinking the same thing! Thats what Im gonna do, thanks wizely!

Ok, Thanks. Hey whats going with love 2 embed?

At the moment not alot, we're waiting for a domain atm. So now its just tweaking and perfecting

Ok, Cool tell me if you need any more help

Well I got the logo almost done its gonna be like a business card and its going in the top left

very cool man!

I can't wait to see the final result!

As you can see I tried too with the coffee cup but it sucks a little.

lol, i cant draw at all i got the cup off da

all my images i painstakingly photographed on a greenscreen and edited them.

I've updated again http://darknotes.net/darknotes.png

 

Erm with Love to Embed, just do what ever you want, if you see anything you don't like, have ago at changing it, see if it looks better.

Ok, I added the logo and some dummy text

Loooooks gooood! I think you should do somthing with the grey area though!

Ya, I was thinking about something but I don't want it to be to crowded you know? I want some focus on my content, i think it will look better when I have the nav done, it will bring some color to it.

hey does anyone know where i can get some good pics of diffrent colord sticky notes?

Ok, I got the basic structure of the nav done, hows it look? Also hows the loading time?

Looking good and the loading time was fine for me and I don't have the world's fastest connection when I'm on the wireless.

 

Couple of minor things maybe to consider playing with... putting a curl into the nav 'post-its' to match the big yellow one and the coffee mug looks like it has a black border around it and just crowds the big yellow 'post-it' a tad too much.

wizely, thanks for the curl idea i was gonna do it but ran out of time last night. about the cup, I cant really change anything with it because my computer died when i was working on it and i only saved it as a png so my psd is gone

wizely, thanks for the curl idea i was gonna do it but ran out of time last night. about the cup, I cant really change anything with it because my computer died when i was working on it and i only saved it as a png so my psd is gone

 

 

But surely if it is worth it to make the design look better its worth doing again....

 

 

Anyway, its good to see you are finally experimenting with new styles instead of sticking with the basics that you were so used to, I leave my review for once it is a little more polished

hey i added a footer what do you think?

looks good! Nice footer...1 think i've gota comment on.. I know the text you've got in the notepad isnt permanent...but it looks wrong been so long..

ya i no im still woking on it, i made the text black and made some other changes.

Hey good luck with this.

 

Looking good so far, although imo the wood effect has to be utilised in something reallllly special to be uber.

 

Just my buttons worth.

 

What you could do though for the nav bar is maybe shrink your text or increase the spacing between the horizontal lines, then work on your css line-height property so it fits on the line.

I'm not keen on the footer it takes away from the design, also I agree with a.g.r.c you need to get the text on the right to work with the lines on the paper as at the moment it looks messy.

 

 

Just try and remember what you have been told on this forum a few million times by a lot of people, you have good ideas but your problem is you rush, it only takes a few tiny little details to turn an ok design into a great design so just take your time, so take your time and plan your elements out. Think about font size, line height, padding, positioning, picture size, fonts and you will see a huge difference in the look and feel of your sites.

Have you thought about using the Iphone as navigation, could be really good in flash (just like the real Iphone interface?

hey guys, ok about the right, thats not permanent at all i just had to use filler text in it so that the column had some height to it, i have not even started on that part yet.

 

Scaz, hi I thought about the iphone interface but I think that it would be too small plus i have no idea how to use flash, and I also want the site to be accessible. But i am going to do something with the iphone maybe my portfolio in the safari browser, with a javascript image replacement script

Ok new update I kinda got started on the right column aka notepad column.

Looks good! Getting better each time 1 thing i'd change though is the notepad... I think i would make it about an inch thicker.

ya, i was going to, I might just not have the lines im not sure yet

The business card Is horrible , so is the logo. It looks cheap compared to the rest of the sites quality , aswell as the navigation. And the content in the middle needs some typographic adjustment ; line heights , Better type , smaller size , Loose the underline etc

Im digging the vertical alignment of the notepad area.

i like the businness card. Business cards are supposed to be supposed to be simple and down to the point.

i like the businness card. Business cards are supposed to be supposed to be simple and down to the point.

 

 

I think you confusing simple with plain and bad design. Simple design is the hardest design to do, the more complex the design in a sense the easier it is to place on a page as people aren't looking at little details as much as they do with a simple design. When you design simple things the positioning has to be perfect, the shade of the colour has to be spot on, space between letters has to be well considered, layout is the most important things. Anyone can put a bit of text on a bit of card, if designing a business card was that simple then companies wouldn't hired designers to do it for them.

 

So please don't justify that poor design by saying it is supposed to be simple, some of the greatest designs are simple, but they didn't take two seconds to create and have to be well considered and planned out just as much as any other designs are.

 

 

But if you like it thats another case, why do you like it...what is good about it that makes you like it? (that isn't a trick question or anything, you will find you will always be asked why you like a design and you have to explain why positioning works and colours work in harmony...blah bla bla, you can't simply say you like it there needs to be a design reason behind why it works with the site)

Not so charmed by the whole desk with the coffee mug theme, seen it to often probably, Also with this one some of the cutting hasn't been done properly. The marker / pen has white pixel edges. Also the design is half finished. I wouldn't start ocding untill your absolutely done with designing. Every pixel of it.

ok, i have cleaned up the images some, besides the pen still working on that, also I am going to start integrating with WP. I have also added a twitter feed to the sidebar.

Ok, well i have integrated it into wordpress and uploaded it to http://sites.boyleswebdesign.com/wordpress/ I think im about to go into the polish stage. Anyone have any more ideas? The sidebar isnt done yet its gonna have twitter updates and last.fm stuff too

The shadows and lighting and stuff don't look right. I'm kinda wondering why you're creating the desktop header with the computer - couldn't you just use real items and photograph them? Everything's easy to make or get hold of (except maybe the iPhone).