Disney Website Design

[Valentine]

Hi there, hopefully this'll be allowed even though it's not directly AGS related. I did a search of past Critics Lounge posts and it seems website layout are allowed to be posted here so maybe if I say please this'll be allowed .

Anyhows, I'm wanting to make a website about the Disney Imagineers (they're the guys that design and engineer the Disney parks and rides) but I'm having trouble designing the site. After a lot of trial and error, the best I've got is this;



I've gone with a blueprint inspired design (as can be seen by the Disney castle blueprints at the top) but I still think it's coming out quite amateurish. I'd really appreciate it if anyone could give me any advice or help on how to improve it! Thanks everyone .

[TerranRich]

Is it going to be a blog type website? Or just an informational database?

So far it looks pretty good. I don't like the gold colors though. I think orange or orange-yellow would look better. You should definitely look into complementary colors as far as web design goes.

[Valentine]

Thanks for the reply .

It's going to be a database website. I only know html, but I realise this is far from ideal for the type of website I want so I'm looking into php. I have to say it's all over the top of my head at the moment . I guess it's good to get a design I like whilst I'm figuring out this coding stuff. I'm also considering paying someone to put together the basic code for it, but I haven't really looked into that yet.

I've looked up the complimentary colours and it looks quite good with the orange instead of the gold, in fact it makes the gold look rather bleurgh when I change it back lol.

I'll keep tinkering away! No euphemisms there.

[TerranRich]

Heh. Well, you can look into GetAFreelancer.com or RentaCoder.com for freelance work, but you get what you pay for, just be warned. They are mostly guys from India that work for cheap, but there's little communication afterward, no support for the code once it's done, and the quality is OK usually.

I'm a professional web designer, and for a site like that, professionally, you're looking about $500-$750 at the very least, depending on what the site will have, and including an administrative back-end where you yourself can log in and edit things.

PHP would be perfect for this sort of thing. It took me a good year or two before I became good enough in PHP to do projects such as this one. I'll help wherever I can as far as the code itself goes. All of my sites that I've made are in PHP, it's a great language to work in.

[Valentine]

Erg, I had a feeling it would cost that much, a bit out of my price range. Ah well, I'll make the site in html for now and maybe come back to it a few months down the line. Thanks for the guidence, TerrenRich.

I've switched the gold to a more orangey colour after looking at a complementary colour chart and it looks better. I just think it needs a general neatening up, but I don't know how to improve further than aligning some of the different elements. Can anyone give me any more advice on improvements?

[Andorxor]

I would use the same color for the links in the sidebar and at the top.

[Darth Mandarb]

I don't have time for a paint-over here ... but there are some issue with the layout/design.

You have re-created the same problem that I have with most designs and that is inconsistent padding and margins.  Some parts of the design ride right up on the edges, some have a lot of space while others have a little space.  This makes the over-all design (to my eyes) a tad muddled and hard to follow/read.

Some suggestions:

- Unify the colors!  You have about 7 different shades of blue (background, logo area, nav background, bar across content top, 'partner site' headers, spotlight header/footer, and the box in the content area) this many colors disjoints the layout and makes it feel .. well ... disjointed.  This is sometimes the most difficult part of design is picking a palette that works together.  There are several websites out there you can use to aid in this (here's one I found on google in about 2 seconds)

- Navigation ... again, it's mostly color issues here.  The white is muddled on the shade of blue and mouseover color (International Disney) is very difficult to read.

- Borders ... there are some inconsistent borders (might be intentional) the tops are thicker in the main boxes.   The 'partner' sites boxes have thick[er] borders.  If this is intentional (and is how you want it) you can discard this part ... it just looks 'off' to my eyes.

- Header/Logo ... this part feels very unbalanced to me.  I don't dislike the simplicity of it, just the layout.  The blue-print looking castle in the background is huggin' the left, the logo is semi-centered (didn't get out a ruler) but the right part is empty.  I might suggest moving the search box (and a home/contact link) up into that empty area and then center the rest of the navigation.

- Fonts.  It appears there are several different fonts being used; the logo, the navigation, and the content appears to be using two similar (yet different (might just be bold/spacing issues)) fonts.  While this isn't always a no-no it can lead to the over-all disjointed feeling as well.

Over-all you have a functional (albeit not too original) layout ... just needs a bit of work to pull it all together.  My post might have come across as harsh, but I wouldn't have spent the time to type it if I didn't think you could make this even better

hope it helped!

[Valentine]

Not harsh at all, only very very useful .

I agree with pretty much everything you've said. I'll go through each point and try and correct them then post my results afterwards. You're right about the header being unbalanced. I've tried adding the search bar up there (I wasn't very happy with having it along the navigation bar) but it doesn't seem to look right at the moment. I'll do some tweaking and see what I come up with.

[TerranRich]

Darth, awesome points. I honestly didn't have the energy to fully look at all design aspects of the layout. I agree with pretty much every point.