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JaceTheAce
11-27-2006, 08:16 PM
I am in charge of redesigning my employer's website and have sort of come to a standstill in its design. Our company wants a clean and uncluttered design that will also allow us to implement the web-based database into the layout with ease. Both our clients, appraisers, and employees use separately-accessed secured databases by logging in.

Clients use the database for ordering and managing appraisals, including facilitating customer service inquieries. Appraisers and real estate agents log-in to manage their open appraisal and BPO orders, including submitting their completed orders. We (employees) use the website for tracking and managing orders from a customer service standpoint, in addition to our accounting, invoicing, CRM, and other important things. Our database is already in use on the current website and I will be working with the developer in ensuring it's successful implementation with the new design.

Now, I came up with the idea to keep the general layout clean by using more white space than usual. I wanted to avoid the typical darker left and right sidebars with the main body of the website being centered; this is what seems to be on most current corporate websites. But, this can change and I may end up having to add a left and right darker side border in order to help lead the viewer's eye to focus on the main content of the website.

CLICK HERE (http://www.jasonevart.com/avisample/sample.jpg) for the design that I have been working on. Please keep in mind that it's very preliminary and several items on it are being worked on. The preview is an entire JPG since I didn't want to bother uploading all the images and change every image tag in the HTML code. The body of the website probably won't be centered on your screen because of varying screen resolutions, but just keep in mind that the top fading bar extends from the left to the right of the screen when viewed as an HTML doc...and that the core of the website is always centered.

Items that I will be improving:

The top menu's text is a bit distorted. I used Illustrator then converted each to a transparent GIF - I think the anti-aliasing degraded during the image size reduction along the way.
Client login area is messed up for some reason. I need to go back and tweak the code. The final design won't include such a bland client login. Do any of you have a suggestion on how I should start with this?
The top menu buttons will have some sort of mouse-over effect.
The actual core of the site will have a sub-menu as a column on the left side of the body. This will appear after users click on the top menu items or login to the database.
Please offer any suggestions as to how I can improve my current design. Thanks everyone for your help... it's greatly appreciated!

chris_bcn
11-27-2006, 08:21 PM
It looks fine - does the job. Not very exciting, but fits the bill.

Lose the reflection on the logo though. This kind of site doesn't need trendwhore gimmicks.

All of the grads seem to just stop. It makes it feel disjointed - I'd blend them in much more - otherwise the whitespace looks empty rather than part of the look and feel.

prewe
11-28-2006, 05:59 AM
it looks pretty good.
have to agree with chris that the gradients are kinda weird somehow, for instance, below the picture the gradient is a couple of pixels to the right comparing to the pic, and a bunch of pixels away from the vertical line. looks a little misplaced.

JaceTheAce
11-28-2006, 04:42 PM
It looks fine - does the job. Not very exciting, but fits the bill.

Lose the reflection on the logo though. This kind of site doesn't need trendwhore gimmicks.

All of the grads seem to just stop. It makes it feel disjointed - I'd blend them in much more - otherwise the whitespace looks empty rather than part of the look and feel.

I think I am going to lose the logo reflection. It looks very cheesy.

I know how I can make the whitespace look less empty. I will outline the body with a gray line so that the space is more defined. I'll post an update soon.

JaceTheAce
11-28-2006, 04:44 PM
it looks pretty good.
have to agree with chris that the gradients are kinda weird somehow, for instance, below the picture the gradient is a couple of pixels to the right comparing to the pic, and a bunch of pixels away from the vertical line. looks a little misplaced.

Thank you - For some reason the gradient is a couple of pixels to the right in Firefox, but other browsers show it lined up. Yet another cross-compatibility issue with web browsers ;)

xplod_ldg
12-01-2006, 09:57 AM
Looks good, but the white space to the right doesn't do it for me. Cut the gradient where the logo is, and the grey stripe where the copyright is level with the rest of the content.

JPnyc
12-01-2006, 02:43 PM
I think it's a very clean and slick corporate look. Pro from the word go.

MAK online
12-01-2006, 04:56 PM
Remember design hierarchy as it pertains to text. If you are going to have header/subheader combo, you need to keep it the same. In the bottom half of the page you have swapped the placement of the header with the subheader.

JaceTheAce
12-18-2006, 09:01 PM
I made some improvements to the design of the website. What do you think so far? Click here (http://www.jasonevart.com/avisample/sample.html).

cibgraphics
12-19-2006, 04:39 AM
Much much better.