Website harsh critic please!

[Darth Mandarb]

You liked the old logo better? I think Darth's logo is pretty awesome!

I think, if he's thinking what I was thinking, that the logo (in the left box over the fancy background) it's kind of hard to read it.

I think it's an improvement.  I think the box things could work if they were shrunk down

I had some time and whipped up a mockup ... I used a lot of resizing so it's sloppy-ish but just wanted to share:



That largish area with the image was very distracting.  I put some "recent news" on the homepage as well as shifting things about.  I moved the navigation up to the top (where a navigation belongs) and resized the box thingees to work with the nav.

I'm in a terrible rush so this was really hurried but I really wanted to help!

[Codex]

Hey, for what it's worth, the logo at the top right is very nice and subtle, whereas the logo on the left is kind of garish... I'd recommend calming it down quite a bit.  The little graphic on the right is nice though.  Remember, you don't necessarily want to attract metalheads, you want to attract clients.

[Codex]

And I see Darth already cleaned it up!  Also, I like the idea of the little navigation graphic boxes, but to be quite honest at first it looked like the little icon for when graphics don't load properly on a site.

[thomasregin]

Okay, people!

Another major overhaul. Used many/most of Darth's ideas.

Also turned the news-archive into a dynamic RSS-feed (although that's not visible to the user).

Let me know if it's for the better! :-)

http://www.northbysound.com

Thomas

[Darth Mandarb]

Okay ... I might have gotten myself in trouble devoting this much time to non-work stuff while at work but I really wanted to do a proper paint-over to fully express my thought(s) for your website!  I think it's off to a great start (of course since it's using my previous paint-over )  I still felt it needed a little more "punch"


- added a new background element
- stepped up the logo/nav area (also made it more uniform so it need not change from page to page)
- grouped the [homepage] content a bit more conveniently
- made the fonts and colors a bit more consistent (the different font on the section headers was removed)

You can add a sub-nav area (similar to the nav now) for the nav links on the subpages as well.  This way, from page to page, there is a consistent feel to the design.

I hope you find it useful and keep up the good work!

[Nikolas]

Darth,

I love your edits, although I will admit that I find the very last 'paintover' a bit too... busy for my taste.

I just wanted to say how thankfull me (we) are for having you, and everyone else trying to help us and offering your feedback and paintovers and everything!

We will keep you posted shortly of any news!