REALLY early stages of a new site

[chris_bcn]

Hi,

I've just been contracted to do a redesign for a design house here in San Francisco (no pressure then!).

The brief is for a content driven site. keyword was "organic" but not nature channel, or trees everywhere.

My take on it was for there to be a lot of whitespce, lots of room to breathe, easy and gentle on the viewers eyes.

The corner logo is there to illustrate growth - the idea the page is growing from that point and will continue to expand - like the company. The gentle green fade at the top and the bottom are there to tie in the nature theme in a sbtle, non obvious manner.

As I say this is a quick, down and dirty early comp - quickly put together into a webapge. The name of the company has been changed on the page. Apologies t anyon on the off chance you have company called avia or digi media!:p

What I would like is feedback on the concept. It is a VERY early stage - there's no navigation, and the design is very basic at the moment, and it's far from obvious that you need to click CLIENT TESTIMONIALS to see them!

Cheers

http://comediadesign.com/am/digi.html

[EC]

I can barely see that green gradient at the top, I'd check it on some other monitors if you can.

mmm. Maybe it needs just a little sumthin' somethin' on the sidebars or something? It's almost *too* much white.

But I love sites like this, I have no doubt you're on the right track and it will be delightful when you're finished.

[JPnyc]

Yeah the gradient could be a smidge darker but overall it's a fine layout. Clean, pro, and spacious, everything you said you wanted

[chris_bcn]

Cheers for the feedback. Hopefully this one will better received than the last!:p (mind you the client loved it and handed me a cheque the other day!)

yeah - I wondered about the gradient - I really like the idea, on my ultrasharp monitor it looks great, but I figured other monitors might not pick it up so well. I'll darken it a bit, make less subtle.

I'm experimenting with the whitespace - I think oncve I decide on the look and feel of the nav (something bold, to make it "pop " a bit) the whitespace won't seem so prevalent!?

[EC]

yup, I think if you use color for the navigation that'll be enough.

Where'd you get those icons, those are lovely. I don't mind being tacky and asking you straight out either. ;) lol

[chris_bcn]

aren't they nice. Don't know if they'll make the final version though.

not sure where I got them now - I'll have a dig round my files and see if I can find out for you

[EC]

^^ hahaha sure!!

I am a big fan of icon buffet -- do you know about their free download thingeebob? It's like a viral thing, somebody has to email you the download link and so forth, pretty sweet. I can hook you up if you wanna give me your email.

Simple Bits is another cool one

Other than that, I've had a hard time finding good ones

[chris_bcn]

I create a lot of my own - I do a lot of intranet sites so I create custom icons for their pages - pixel by pixel - it appeals to me for some reason! I maybe shold move to vector, but I really like pixel icons

[EC]

that's crazy. I wish I could do that!! You have impressed me yet again.

I bought some vector icons from IconBuffet -- freaking amazing. I needed them to be rather large because of the audience, but they shrink down to itty bitty and work just as well. I am just fascinated with icons. lol

[chris_bcn]

I got into icons about a year ago. I guess pixel icons take me back to my childhood - builing things peice by peice with lego! Ah those were the days:p

I'll probably make custom icons for this site, but for now I grabbed some from an old folder

I need to start learning vector icons though - a very different beast to be sure.

Pixel icons are pretty easy to create - at least the basic outline. It gets fiddly when you start adding contrast, gradient etc. If you fancy learning, and have some time to play about you should get a set of pixel icons, blow them up and disect how they were made.

Check out http://strawbee.com/2005/11/06/tiny-little-icons/ - free icons too!!! yippee

Icon Buffet icons are truly incredible. Those guys are amazing. i wish I could do that. sigh!

[EC]

OOooh those are pretty! Thanks!!

Oh -- and by the way, on that page you sent? There is a comment at the bottom that talks about the free Icon buffet delivery thing. You should sign up, you gotta have buddies to send you the links -- it's weird. So if you PM me your email I can "send to a friend" when I get my downloads. That type of deal. If'n you want.

[DesignIt]

Nice clean looking layout. I will be interested to see how the nav looks. =)

[chris_bcn]

me too! :p

That part is evolving slowly! I should have it done by mid january. I'm taking the next 3 weeks off for the hols