Is this too red?

[Phait]

Is there too much red text? I'm thinking maybe I should lighten the left column or something.

 

http://www.phait-accompli.com/personal/links.php

[TrancedelicBlues]

I think it looks really cool

 

Overall, it looks good, but a little splash of yellow here, green there, and blue someplace else would liven it up a tad. Maybe for topic headings?

 

Very nice job, though, overall

[Bbach1]

Originally posted by Phait:

Is there too much red text? I'm thinking maybe I should lighten the left column or something.

 

http://www.phait-accompli.com/personal/links.php

Nice design, but the background is a tad too dark. Red against dark is not a great contrast. Guess it depends on how you want your links to stand out.

[linwood]

I like it. it took a sec for my eyes to clear, but hey, my eyes are 50. I think you do good work.

[Phait]

K I've updated the bg color of the MISC pane... I may change the colors a bit. I would maybe put in some yellow but red and yellow reminds me too much of McDonald's

 

Thanks

[urk10]

It's Awesome!

 

You rock!

 

[where02190]

I jsut had my eyes examined last week, and still have perfect vision, so having prefaced with that.....I find it almost painful to view, and if i didn't need to access specific information only available from that site, I'd move on quickly.

[Phait]

Do you mean the links page, or all of it? Think I should tone down the red text or use a different color altogether?

[whitefang]

The orange in the "misc." column works better for me. But MY eyes are 53, and the print's too small!

 

Whitefang

[Phait]

Press CTRL plus + to size up the text in Firefox, or click VIEW/TEXT SIZE in Internet Explorer

[Gator Wing]

Red print on a yellow background is very easy to read (not everyone is going to think of McDonalds - and now you just made me hungry!). Well-organized.

[Tedster]

Originally posted by cwfno:

Originally posted by Phait:

Is there too much red text? I'm thinking maybe I should lighten the left column or something.

 

http://www.phait-accompli.com/personal/links.php

Nice design, but the background is a tad too dark. Red against dark is not a great contrast. Guess it depends on how you want your links to stand out.

On the other hand...I'd say just the opposite...background a bit too grey. I'd darken it. But that's me.. Different strokes for different folks.

[YourMotherShouldKnow]

Nice design, Phait. I'm in the camp where the dark background hurts my eyes. The lighter the background the more likely I am to stick around.

[deanmass]

I like it.

[Mark LaCoste]

Hmmm... I like it... I suspect that a true expert could increase the contrast without ruining the color scheme. That is beyond me, though.

 

From a fellow Buddhist, Rock On, Dude.

[Phait]

Thanks for all the input, I'm still inbetween on whether I should change it. Maybe I will lighten the overall grey though.

 

Mark, I am not buddhist but I do have an interest in the philsophies, for certain.

[Gus Lozada]

Oh my eyes!!!!

[1_dup16]

The red is cool, it's the background that has too less contrast with the text, thus making reading fatiguing.

[Phait]

Ok now I upped the text color, made the link color a light grey, and bold text's red. Better now?

[Hendmik]

Nice site. Much better than mine... except for that link to Prorec.com. It seems their latest industry news is that Cakewalk aquired Ultrafunk plug-ins in August 2003...

[GY]

Very tasteful. Non offensive.

[Slowly]

Maybe its just the monitor at work, but its not red enough. Kcbass

[ernest828]

The background was abit dark for me. My eyes aren`t good to begin with so...I like red so give me more!

Ernest

[Phait]

Originally posted by Hendmik:

Nice site. Much better than mine... except for that link to Prorec.com. It seems their latest industry news is that Cakewalk aquired Ultrafunk plug-ins in August 2003...

Heheh, well I think ProRec is a nice resource, but thanks for bringing this up because I need to add

http://www.theprojectstudiohandbook.com/

[mwestenberg]

Hey Phait, I think the newest colors are great, the contrast is better and is very readable. For me, greys, even the darker ones, are much easier on the eyes than brighter stuff as long as the text has enough contrast.

[russrags]

Hey Phait,

 

You do good work. I'm curious where you developed you skills??? I know a little html, but am real interested in taking a class on web design. I'm in Nashville and really haven't found any more that a hand full of very expensive two day workshops. I'd prefer a night class at the community college or something, but just haven't found what I'm looking for.

 

I'm just curious what seems to be the norm for web developers to get up to speed on the education side of things???

 

Russ

http://home.bellsouth.net/p/PWP-russragsdale

[Gus Lozada]

Oh My Ey...

 

It looks great, amigo.

[LiveMusic]

You have skills far better than mine but I'd say that without a doubt, your site would be shot down by a usability expert. The background is too dark.

 

Your logo is also rather hard to read and it should be the clearest thing there.

 

Usability experts rant and rave all the time about web designers that dress things up too much. Light background and dark text is FAR superior in the usability stuff. And hey, I love white text on black and I even have one of my own sites like that, but the experts would hate it. And they (usability gurus) know their stuff... what keeps people on a site. Pretty colors and fancy graphics does not.

 

Good luck, it's pretty but a bit lacking in usability, IMO.

[schmee]

i'm a "usability expert", been designing fortune 500 sites since 96. the first thing about usability one learns is that every situation is different, and sometimes completely different.

 

the other thing one learns is that evey expert on theplanet have wildly differing opinions on what works and what doesn't. some approach the issue from an engineering mindset, others from a marketing mindset, still others from a "human factors" mindset (the folks who design things like tank or jet fighter interfaces that save people's life).

 

in your case phait i can offer advice from the mindsets i specialize in:

 

graphic design: you're going for a certain look and feel, and in that you've succeeded. a graphic designer can tear apart many aspects in your decision making, but in the context of what this site is there to accomplish, i don't think the smaller details are so bad. things most designers would bring up would be stuff like the "busy-ness" of it, and the many elements which compete with each other for the eye's attention (which is where the busy-ness comes from).

 

i know many digital artists who could poopoo some of your rendering and conceptual work as far as the creative elements go, but for your level of experience i think it's fine.

 

incidentally, what you're calling red looks distinctly orange on my PC monitor (and i keep my gamma levels dark). i suspect a more saturated red might look better, but that's a subjective thing.

 

the trouble is that you use various shades of red and orange in your top graphics (especially with the gradients on the links panel topside), and they interfere with each other. better to stick to a single base hue and limit your variations to pure luminosity (white to black). but my eye sees literally 3 slightly different hues up there and that means they don't fit any kind of color scheme.

 

user interface: kind of a train wreck. although there are only 4 pages to this site, it breaks some of the conventions users come to expect, eg the lack of a home page. that doesn't bug me personally, but UI folks will always get bugged by that.

 

as far as architecture goes, on the links page anyway, i'm really not to clear on why you go to the trouble of breaking up things into 3 categories - which are all "links" - but call one category "links" while the others get some other distinction, eg "misc".

 

i doubt many people would be terribly confused about this page phait, but i wouldn't show it as a portfolio piece to a site architect or web design firm on the basis it demonstrates your ability to organize/layout for the web.

 

but again, for what you're trying to accomplish and your skill level i think it's fine. and that's definately orange, not red =)

 

marketing: assuming you're simply trying to draw people into your own sense of culture, i think the overall look and feel are fine for this purpose (having seen some of your other stuff). you could have a more call to action oriented series of elements on these pages that would help that along (eg more detailed/visually informative call out panels to things like your project), but i doubt few would be expecting anything like that anyway. you're not using this as some kind of serious promotional site anyway so it's not really an expectation.

 

but it's worth considering those dynamics if you're wanting to flesh things out more/drive more traffic to your projects/etc.

 

i agree with the logo comment above that it lacks readability (i doubt it would translate well in any other format, eg print), but for what you're branding it seems appropriate.

 

hope all that helps in some way.

[Phait]

Originally posted by russrags:

Hey Phait,

 

You do good work. I'm curious where you developed you skills??? I know a little html, but am real interested in taking a class on web design. I'm in Nashville and really haven't found any more that a hand full of very expensive two day workshops. I'd prefer a night class at the community college or something, but just haven't found what I'm looking for.

 

I'm just curious what seems to be the norm for web developers to get up to speed on the education side of things???

 

Russ

http://home.bellsouth.net/p/PWP-russragsdale

Thanks. I learned HTML online, the design well I started out like everyone else - using free graphics for the first few iterations of my personal site (which is all I did for awhile, just my personal/fan sites, even before I got online!) then designing the graphics myself, and using a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get-Editor - for probably 2 years, then I got into HTML - easier than I thought. My design "talent" wasn't overnight either. I just kept doing it, which is important.

 

You can learn however you want, but I would personally not suggest paying for Web Design courses if they are teaching you the basics like HTML and simpler layouts - because you can learn all this stuff online, for no cost to you. That ultimately is up to you though. Perhaps you feel you need some one-on-one assistance. The norm I would think would be the self-taught way.

 

But I think alot of the schools offering courses don't have a complete grasp of what webdesign is. I mean hey, I'm still learning - just because I can push eye candy doesn't mean I know all there is. Schmee gave some good points (thanks) - though most often with personal websites it's ok to veer away from trying to cater and please everybody. But some things I do care about (like eye stress etc.). Now if you actually want to learn the visual aesthetic design like the graphical layout and content, all I can say is it's best you have some margin of talent to develop, you know? There's tons of resouces out there but one I began with years ago: www.webmonkey.com

 

As far as the logo not being too readable, usually I use Times New Roman, but that didn't really fit my overall design scheme. It'd be the first time I changed the logo type to something else too.

 

Thanks everyone.