My point is you won't get clients to put in your portfolio to impress prospective clients with a website that doesn't showcase your ability. Forget Ford, what about Sam's mechanic shop down the street, or the local storage facility around the corner, or your Aunt's cookie business -- you have to design something that shows people what you can do, otherwise no one will ask you to do anything. That's all the help I can give, my two cents if you will. Good luck Trey.
@tannercampbell I respectfully have to disagree. I am no expert, and sure the site needs some tweaking, but I think he has come a long way since his first few attempts. His current design is original, and I like that about it.
I do understand that everyone has their own opinions and that's the power of forums! Constructive criticism is great in this industry.
I mean, this is chris' website http://chriscoyier.net/ Does that really look like someone who could code a big site like this one? He made this website you know.
And why do you think everyone says to do work for free for the first couple of sites? I know I need some sort of portfolio. I've already picked out some people that I respect enough to do that.
My point is, you can't showcase ALL your abilities in one website without it turning out to be a total cluster #$%&. I tried to use as much jQuery/CSS3/HTML5 as I could, but I really can't cram everything in, its just a portfolio. I agree it needs to be good, but does good have to mean big?
And your comparing it to some good websites, I will admit it. But what your not doing is comparing it to other websites that have a similar design philosophy.
One of the unique things I was going for in my website, was it being almost 100% CSS3, rather than a ton of gradients, textures and illustrations. And that right there should be enough to prove I'm not completely incompetent.
Offering some constructive criticisms would be nice, rather than just telling me to restart the first grade. I am confident in my code, I don't need to relearn HTML.
@andrewsellenrick Probably, I'm just gonna ignore the rest of his comments unless he says something constructive... and as well considering he has had TONS of questions, but never helped anybody, at least. Not enough to be able to find ANY, through all the topics he started.
Not to brag but, I've only made 1 topic on here asking for help. And it turned out to just be a stupid thing that the W3C wants us to live with.
Now, what do people with actual experience have to say? I'm interested in hearing from some of the others that critiqued my work before, and really helped.
@treyrust, you are right. If I am going to make rude comments I should have at least made a few constructive ones first. Things I like about your design... The background image, the font choice, and the use of color. Things you might improve upon... The unique font is great for the menu, but is hard to read in smaller headlines, try using a san-serif instead. The use of white strokes is a harsh way to separate your content and creates boxes in boxes in boxes. Try using a vertical line, different bg color, or texture to create contrast instead... even a gray stroke would be easier on the eyes. Don't be afraid to let some small design elements to break the boundaries of your content to create visual interest.
Here's what I think, plain and simple, you decide how constructive it is...
Your code.
Its decent. It's surprisingly readable, although i'd suggest some indentation for more readability. There's some issues with paragraphs inside of list items or improper usage of header tags. In this regard i'd suggest looking at w3schools for what each tags purpose is. As well as work on your layouts. You also say on your site that you know html5, but there is no use of it. Same thing for css3, except in this case, just because you can do it doesn't mean you should, use what you need.
Your Design.
It's bad. I don't want to say it's terrible, it's not, but there's just so many things lacking that I'm not sure how to help you improve any of them. The only thing I applaud you for is wanting to be different. Funny thing about that is when you try to be different you end up with a design that is outside of the box, but also outside of good design. People are inside of the box for a reason, because it works. I suggest if you want to be different think on the edge of the box and only be a little different. Besides that you definitely need to improve your design skills. Try these sites:
These are just some sites that I myself read. You may ask how I read them all? Two words... Feed aggregator. I have a mac so i use Reeder. It helps immensely in reading lots of blogs quickly.
One more quick tip on your designs in general, for your site at least. Your going for a portfolio site, so the one page, dynamically loaded content just doesn't work well at all for that. Try not to push away the html conventions that are standard. And with that thought, standards compliance is also very important.
Okay! So now you know what I think, how about what I think you should do... again you choose if you want to follow these or not...
Steps to becoming an awesome designer in a few short months (perhaps less)...
Read all of the links I listed as well as search for more. Do this for about a month. Reading all of these can be difficult, so get a feed aggregator to simplify it.
With your new found knowledge, start practicing. Make sample sites to demonstrate what you've learned. Then show them to people. Not your family, they'll tell you it's great no matter if it's totally awesome or a horse's rear. Instead try friends first, then try online. This forum will work or any good web design forum.
Once you and those other people are sure your skills have improved, try and do your site again. (I know you've done it over and over again, but if you really want to be a great web designer that's what it takes. If that's not what you want to do, maybe your on the wrong career path).
When your done with the redesign show it off to those same people. If it's not great, repeat the previous step again until it is. Once it is then your ready.
Now your ready to do small sites. I know you want to do big awesome sites. But everyone starts out small. So go to local places and offer to redo their website for free. Yes free, with no true experience, they won't pay you no matter how much skill you say you have. It's about show not tell in this biz. So do at least five local sites, i'd suggest places that don't even have sites or have very old sites. Elementary schools are a good example.
After you start doing these sites, where hopefully they will at least be good looking and function as promised (Function on the web is more important than design), add them to your portfolio as images, the more the merrier.
Finally once you've filled up your portfolio with ONLY the best of your designs. You can now start charging. But again, start small, choose small places at first and charge in small increments as your skills and design prowess increases.
* As a side note to this list, consider a niche market, no one is a master at everything and focusing your skills on one area will bank you more business as well as make you look more professional.
And just to cheer you up... a few years ago I knew absolutely nothing... about web design, of course.
Finally, be professional, if you want to make money in this business, you got to treat it like one.
Trey, Hi. I am an employed web designer, with a degree in "visual communications". You need neither to be a good designer/artist, but I want you to know I take the craft seriously, and have invested a lot of time studying/developing in it. I want to offer you some constructive advice, and I am not trying to be rude. Assuming you're not just teasing us with some bad designs, please read on.
Your websites are absolutely poor. There is no other way to state it. I feel like i need to be honest with you, because it's not worth your time to be given minor aesthetic criticisms like, "I don't like how large the font is". Now this is totally excusable if you're a young guy. Are you under the age of 18? Honestly, it's fine if you are. Let us help you. I certainly made some "interesting" art when I was a teenager. It's very clear to me that you do not have any kind of background in design. Web design could be thought of as an extension of a good sense of graphic design, mingled with some technical knowledge. The technical side of things is variable, but accounts for say 10% of a good site aesthetically speaking.
What to do now? Start from the basics. Go to the library and check out some art history books. Read up on Bauhaus, De Stijl, Modernism, Mondrian, Frank Lloyd Wright. Get inspired. Go to a museum. Read some magazines. Find an artist who's work you admire. Tell us why you like it, and why you think the work is "successful". Are you able to take some beginning art classes? Drawing, painting, anything?
For the next several months of your artistic education, you should not touch a computer unless it's posting on this forum, or looking up art. You do not need to read tutorials, because you lack the fundamental design sensibilities REQUIRED to create successful work. Computers tend to be bad for a developing artist. You need to grow.. A LOT...
Shelf your idea of free-lancing as a web designer until you've grown significantly as a designer. If it's truly a passion and you're able to evolve your aesthetic sensibilities, you'll be fine.
Let me know if there's anything I can elaborate further on, or if you'd like some additional advice. Best of luck.
Alright. I feel like ranting on how bad his design is, is a little much.
@Treyrust, I believe you're improving in stages which is great. I am using a color similar to the one you chose on the CSS-Tricks charity project along with (@jamy_za and @joshwhitedesign), although it's not set in stone. I think your site would look cool if you use the color (shade of red) of your main section as your background and rethink your typography on the menu. Get rid of the black sections as they really will serve no design purpose.
While some of the criticism here might put you off a little bit, you should be super happy that people are taking the time to comment! From what I've seen it's all been pretty valuable advice.
Nobody starts off as a pro. You've made great strides from your first design and if you keep on going you'll definitely improve.
Others have said it best, there is no way I can top it. Don't let it deter you though. It's important you know that it isn't done with the intent to stomp you down.
I don't think the reason all these sites suck is because I have no artistic ability. I think its because I automatically scrap anything that looks remotely close to something I've seen before, because I don't want to seem like a copy-cat.
@ChristopherBurton So, I swallowed my pride a little bit. A http://bit.ly/l2gm5i I just chopped the "treyrust" from your mockup, and did the rest in CSS3. I do like it better. But where does that leave me? I could polish it up from there, should I really just "steal" a part of your mockup? that seems lazy to me...
Note: That picture isn't very good, its a screen cap and the colors on the edges are distorted. I messed with it for about 30 minutes, but its 4AM, so I'm going to bed...
As we say in dutch "Beter goed gejat dan slecht bedacht". Or in english, it is better to steal a good concept, then to create your own that sucks. (not saying your concept sucks, I wouldn't dare saying that with my lack of experience)
By the way your previous design before the one @ChristopherBurton suggested, had a feel abit like this one - http://www.uteclc.com/ (probably because of the background). My point being that you may think you are doing something different, but it may end up looking like something else that maybe you just haven't seen. So what the other people and me are saying is: Focus on making your site look good and then on making it look different. And you are just starting as well (I am too, you know), so just think how musicians and other people start out with art - they first copy and recreate classics and already established concepts,songs,drawings etc.. And only then they go on creating work of their own.
I do believe only way you learn is by example. I don't think you are going to be a copycat for trying to do similar website to somebody's while you practice.
I don't want to be cheeky by posting the site that I made recently, but I wanted to get some constructive feedback like you did. For some reason my topic doesn't get the same attention - its called "Latest Version of my New Website" under Other Discussions. The site is: http://archgarbev.com/
I am in no way trying to change this discussion of course.
@Treyrust: I, in no way was suggesting you to use my mockup over yours. I was suggesting you use the background color and get rid of the black box feel. Which I noticed you even used again for some odd reason. Why are you using the boxes as a design standpoint?
I don't believe you stole an idea of my mockup as people work collaboratively all the time. If you want to use the PSD I have for the mockup reply with your email and I'll send it to you.
Chris is right, you seem to be stuck on these 'boxes'. Break free from the little boxes.
Typography is not easy, and I think it might be what you are struggling most with right now. Here is a site that I just found (and bookmarked for inspiration!) http://www.f-i.com/infographics/civilwar/
I am constantly comparing and contrasting my own designs to people that I aspire to becoming - it's how you grow!
I can't stop reading this long string of denial. It's addicting. It's not a pride issue, it's a being self aware issue. Your designs are awful, your code is okay. That list that @scubasteve gave you is awesome, and the fact he took the time to write that is even more awesome.
Swallow your pride, accept that your design skills are awful and your coding is decent. Go read scuba's links, go pick up a design elements book, and get educated in good and bad design.
I'm constantly sucking at something, I mean, I've asked @TheDoc and other masters on this forum more questions than I care to remember -- the best way to approach learning is to accept that you know NOTHING and you are never THE BEST. It's a Plato thing. Also the fact that you compared your site to Chris Coyler's is arrogant as all get out.
@Tannercampbell, As @TheDoc stated, no one is a pro off the bat so telling someone repetitively that their work basically sucks is not really constructive criticism and people won't take kindly to that if you resume to act that way.
@TheDoc Yes, I do have quite a bit of trouble with typography. It's the last thing I put into a website, and I try and design them so that its boxed off and "safe" from messing with the design itself.
I think typography is more important than the amount of time you are giving to it. Typography is usually the very first thing I work on for a design - it has a great impact on the tone and feeling of the design.
Little boxes are fine - you'll find them all over the place in great designs, but they are usually have a far lesser impact on the design. Take a look at this site, for example. There are boxes everywhere but they don't feel like 'boxes' - they are functional and simply separate separate ideas of content.
@treyrust, in reading through this thread, I think the commentary can be distilled as follows: originality is an outstanding goal. Powerful, authentic originality, however, comes from a profound understanding of the conventions of one's medium, be it writing, painting, photography, or web design.
Typography, color theory, layout (visual design), graphics...all need to work together to create an interesting and harmonious whole. (and please don't think I'm preaching from the mountain top here: I'm still trying to learn all these pieces and put them together myself!).
Knowing the 'rules', for lack of a better term, isn't an impediment to originality; it's a prerequisite. Even a kick-ass, totally original site like this is rooted in a thorough understanding of all the aforementioned elements. @scubasteve has given you a great list of resources to aid in learning (I'll be digging through them also, as well as following some of his advice).
It's all a process of learning and improving; you've improved your design through this process, and I'm sure it will continue to improve. Just don't be afraid to make a clean, conventional design for now -- that you can then use as the base for your explorations into originality as you learn and grow.
I believe my bad designs come from not having experience in merging my graphic skills, with my web development skills.
I've been working on both for years now, but I've only ever put them together a handful of times.
My art standalone isn't half bad (says me), but when I try and make it a functional website, it falls flat, because I don't have experience in typography, for example. I can do pretty graphics, but not a pretty website.
I'm going to study typography and put some of that into the new design, and see how it goes.
I think that you are, like so many others, trying desperately hard (& I admire this) to be good at web design and development because these are extremely popular and attractive careers with potentially outstanding prospects. However, that's the problem, you are trying to break into a career now which if anything is becoming badly diluted and saturated. I think too many people are trying to "make a go" at web design, and I think too many try to do everything for themselves from scratch. The problem with that is you don't learn those conventions of design (which cc630 talks about), you're just diving right in at the deep end and trying to run before you can walk.
Walk first. Then run. I studied product design at University, and whilst it's a slightly different area of design, I learned all the conventions. I was then able to twist them for myself to apply my own originality.
However, if I hadn't have done my degree and learnt so much about design, I feel my work now would be on a similar level to yours. I am not saying you have to do a degree but I think you should first, before you make websites, learn more about design in a broader sense, study the conventions and practises, learn all about "Total Design", learn how to draw a QFD, trust me in the long run it will stand you in good stead, you need a foundation to build upon
I'm not sure if I'm exactly at liberty to talk about myself, but...
I've been studying design for years. I'm not a newbie, I've always been fascinated by design in general. And believe that I have a firm understanding of good design.
It's just, you can "understand" it to infinity, but that's not going to make the first websites I make good.
My problem here is, I have been working on everything individually, not together. I have probably made less than 10 overall sites. The rest where to learn CSS/HTML. I've done tons of graphic design in Gimp, but it was only to learn Gimp.
And I'm aware that my designs suck. I wouldn't say they are horrible. But I know they aren't as good as some that are out there.
Trey, another thought...one theme I think I've picked up from your responses here is that you have a design background but the technical details (html/css, etc) are holding you up. May I suggest that you try creating some mock-ups, either with software you're familiar with (ie Photoshop if you use that a lot, or whatever else) or, possibly better yet, with pen(s) and paper. That way you can really focus on the design without worrying about how to float this and clear that and which font to use, etc. Once you have a design you feel good about, then you can set out to code it. That way the design drives the coding rather than vice versa.
Don't know if it's a good idea, but thought I'd throw it out there. :)
You'll get it. You've got some of it. A lot of people don't have that much. To post in a forum is to open yourself up to criticism. Lose your defenses. You're here to learn. Again, LOSE YOUR DEFENSES. I'm not going to repeat everyone here by saying "learn how to design". I'm going to say Learn How to Brand. Your retro site was fun, a bit out of my taste, but it definitely reminded me of those videogames I'd play as a child. That is a brand. It's a narrow focus, sure, say for a client who has 80's dance nights at his bar, but it's something. My advice is to build a portfolio. The easiest way I can think to do that is to put yourself for hire IMMEDIATELY on 99designs.com. And then design. And design. And do not stop. Do not be satisfied with less than 100% of your effort. You got this. Just get it slowly.
I've been following this post, and from the outset thought it was 1. a wind-up or 2. a social network marketing experiment/ploy. Makes funny reading and each re-design kind of reminded me of this hilarious blog post.
Sorry Trey if I'm wrong! Anyway most of the advice here is good stuff, you do need to go (spend a long time) looking at some inspiring examples and reading though (of which which there are thousands out there on dedicated sites as per recommends above. I'm on a similar road with coding problems currently. Just don't give up!
You really think it's a good idea to spend hours, days, weeks, making logos and websites for people, when you are competing for the "prize"? This guy could end up spending months putting together work and not getting ANYTHING for his efforts. You can't use any of it for a portfolio either, unless it's work that's actually being used. "Oh yeah, I made this website, but the client picked somebody elses". Doesn't work.
There are far better, respectful ways of gaining clients. You work hard, first off by putting together small projects for friends and family. You won't get loads of dollar, but they'll probably buy you a case of beer or whatever. Then the more you do, and the better the get, the more likely people will then pass your name on and you benefit from word of mouth. Then with your experience, you can start to charge a bit, and build up a portfolio.
Websites like 99designs encourage speculative work, and spec work is a horrible disease among the design community which should be eradicated as soon as possible.
Please, whatever level you are at, don't lower yourself to "competing" for work like a bunch of dogs.
I worked hard freelance from the bottom and built myself up and I now have a full time job as a developer/designer. Did I have to gain my experience on 99designs? Abso-effing-lutely not, I can't think of anything more degrading or worse. I don't believe for a second anybody serious about their profession as a designer or developer would ever step foot on that website.
It is about experience, not gaining clients. You don't have to compete the prize, see it as a bonus. You could just use the briefing and not even submit the design.
Experience is key, and gaining experience from a good briefing is in my opinion better then gaining it from a local store owner who doesn't know what he wants.
And why would you not be able to use designs that didn't got picked? They show what you can do. And you don't have to say on your portfolio that it is from a design contest. Just say it is a redesign. As long as it looks good, no one cares.
Learning how to deal with clients is an essential part. If you go on 99designs and you don't win, which you more than likely never will, you'll never get that contact with the client. You'll never have meetings, emails, telephone conversations. No matter how "difficult" the local store owner is, I'd rather deal with him then some mickey mouse scooby who just want's to take advantage of me over a spec competition site like 99designs.
I actually wrote an article on my distaste for spec work, and why, on Speckyboy. Feel free to look it up to see more of my reasons why I am absolutely against spec work.
I must admit I'd not heard off 99designs so went to have a look. It seems to do much to protect the client (and therefore it's own business model and profit) and little for the designers. My initial suspicion would be that clients go on there, have hundreds of designs created to their brief, then 'not like' any of them and get their money back, walking off with an idea for free to go create themselves? (or is there something to prevent that? well might be.) In other words it does on face of it seem to mean endless hours of designing for very little chance of income for their efforts.
Great for a designer in answering briefs to practice skills as a hobby, not so great for sustainable income. Just my two frankfurters.
I think the 99 design suggestion is for the guy to craft his skills and work work work work in order to perfect them, not in order to make a living out of it. That's how I interpret the comment and I think it's a valid approach. Just don't stick there for TOO long!!!
I signed up for the site. But I'm not sure its a great idea...
If I'm going to be doing a bunch of work that isn't going to get used, why should I even bother trying to give it to somebody? I think it would be best just to design sites in my own time. Rather than competing for a 'prize'
I really don't like how this is turning into a flame war...
Honesty, I didn't think the first design was as terrible as some are saying. The second design you posted, well I actually thought it was worse.
But, this forum is for feedback. Not for ranting about how the OP lacks skills. Sure, his designs could use improvement. But I really don't like the tone that is being set...
Keep in mind, its just a proof of concept, the big grey box will have a website in it once I'm done. And I will play around with the colors and shadowing. The text isn't final and the mockup is NOT done. I see where I'm going to improve it, I'm just looking for a bit of feedback in the meantime.
Yup - great stride in the right direction. I'd say drop down some of the opacity on the drop shadow on the footer.
I'm not sure about the arrow mark on the nav and how it just kind of juts out there. It's not really integrated with anything. I'd say try expanding the menu bar as Doc suggests, and maybe either make the focus/hover made the font color red, or maybe like a red or gray line that somehow works with the nav bar itself.
First off, sorry for resurrecting a dead thread, but I think you'll see my reason for doing so once you're done reading this post. BTW, it's a long one so be aware of that before you do...
So, thanks for (the few) who where encouraging while I was doing this, even though I've decided to not pursue web development as a career (we'll continue with this in a bit) it was nice knowing that I had some support.
I think there are three main reasons why my designs here sucked...
1) I was in it for the money: Not to be brash but I think I'm a pretty decent designer when it comes to computer graphics. But as all of you should know, you can't do art if you're not in the right mindset.
In this case, I was trying to rush and get past my first website so I could start talking to other people and get more websites done so I could start making money as soon as possible because! I had a deposit on a German Shepherd pup, I had a major deadline and was getting more and more stressed each time I make a new revision. I think my first design here was the best because I actually put some heart into it (even though I definitely could have touched it up a bit). Each time a did another revision I was running on even less time than before so each design got less and less heart.
With this new design I made some revisions, but was messing around with Linux and did the n00b thing and reformatted my whole disk and lost that revision (in my defense, it was arch and it had the most confusing partition manager I've ever seen), once it was gone I completely ran out of motivation to do more work, because I just sat there with photoshop open thinking "I have to make something great, something fast, something now! I've got 20 days left on photoshop I need to do it in that time-frame to buy photoshop so I can keep going!" instead of "Hmm, so, what do I want for this website..." You see? I also need to start making money so I can move away from my parents and a job as Burger king is NOT an option.
I ended up getting my deposit back on the GSD, since it had gotten to a point where I couldn't do unless I was under the most random/pig flying luck ever which, knowing MY luck wouldn't happen... Since great art takes time I stopped here.
2) I was under a lot of stress... From needing to make $950 for the GSD and from a lot of other stuff going on at the time. Long story short I was actually working really hard to stop a Siberian Husky from going to the pound and all these things combined really stressed me the most I've ever been my entire life and my GOD I never want to be there again... Seriously, I was having cricopharyngeal spasms (there isn't a shorter word, I looked...) every day and if you don't know what that is, imagine having a lump the size of a golf-ball in your throat, everyday...
3) I was ONLY doing it for the money... Sure, I enjoy throwing a website together, it's kinda fun and I still have dreams to make a social networking site or something along the lines of google/yahoo... But doing it for strangers and a few bucks? It's something I enjoy but not something I want to do all the time everyday.
One of my true passions is game development, I was only doing web development because again, I was trying to get out of the house as well. I had gotten intimidated by C++ when I started learning it because I was trying to do to much to soon and I had this huge mental brick wall up. Once I stopped doing web development, I started messing with IRC, I wanted to make an IRC bot again because my roots in scripting where from mIRC and that was something I enjoyed. I got fed up with the limitations of mIRC script because I had used javascript and the likes so I was spoiled in what I could do with them...A now friend pointed me to just straight Perl and eventually I ended up trying to do it in ruby with the cinch framework, while I was making something in Ruby (and very refreshingly enjoying desktop coding) I thought to myself "If I can do Ruby this well, is C++ really that hard? If nothing else I'll just learn it the way I did with ruby in, what a couple of weeks?" so then I picked up a C++ book again and started learning that, I got fed up with "the ruby way" as I started to fall in love with C++ and continued to learn and program with it.
I put a lot of work into a text based adventure game and came close to finishing it, but then lost interest because my scope kept getting bigger and I realized I should just rewrite the whole thing to avoid bugs. Then I picked up SDL which I had become intimidated by, in a similar fashion to the way I was with C++ but not as strong, I started doing it again and realized why it Sdl, freaking SIMPLE Direct media Layer. With an emphasis on SIMPLE, seriously, underline it, capitalize it, put it in italic and make it bold it's simple!
At this point I'm almost done with a pong clone, I've gotten the physics working beautifully and now I just have to implement AI which should be cake and well as scoring which IS trivial.
How do I like what I'm doing now? I LOVE it! It's something I'm doing because I want to do it, not because I need to make money. Sure, the money thing is there, but I figure I'll just live under my parents roof and code full time to take advantage of the situation I'm in. Because right now I can code 24/7 if I got a joke... Er, job at crystals I would probably be to tired to code when I got home so I'm definitely gonna take some time to do what I want to do. Remember, the reason I was doing web development was I was scared of game development.
So, I'll make another website at some point, I'll do it in another thread to dissociate myself from this disaster. At this point I want a blog, a place for a resume for my programming projects that I want to show off. It won't need to look great because I'm just going to house a blog and a resume and since people aren't going to hire me from my website anymore I can relax and will probably make a much better one in the process. Don't be surprised if you see wordpress go up with someone else's theme and a little blog on my website.
So, sorry for resurrecting this old thread, but I figured it was justified since I wanted to give a reason as to why these designs sucked and dissociate myself from them and at least give the reason why I created them. I don't want archive hunters (or people that know me that find this from stalking me on google, or someone looking at my profile on here) to think I just flat out suck.
I think in this industry you see a lot of people struggle with both sides of the spectrum. Listen, not everyone has the skill to be both, a designer and developer. Sadly we're not all cutout to be in this profession. People must believe that design is easy and flows off one's head. It takes a lot of thought and practice to learn your own skill that not everyone has.
There's nothing wrong with buying a theme and creating a blog to showcase products you've developed. Actually, I would encourage it as you're also supporting a designer.
I'm sure a lot of us have second guessed if we wanted to pursue this profession as a career. We all get frustrated in this industry for many reasons related to our work so I can understand not wanting to recreate what you've lost in Photoshop. You have to learn to laugh at that kind of stuff. But I wish you well and success in game development.
I do understand that everyone has their own opinions and that's the power of forums! Constructive criticism is great in this industry.
And why do you think everyone says to do work for free for the first couple of sites? I know I need some sort of portfolio. I've already picked out some people that I respect enough to do that.
My point is, you can't showcase ALL your abilities in one website without it turning out to be a total cluster #$%&. I tried to use as much jQuery/CSS3/HTML5 as I could, but I really can't cram everything in, its just a portfolio. I agree it needs to be good, but does good have to mean big?
And your comparing it to some good websites, I will admit it. But what your not doing is comparing it to other websites that have a similar design philosophy.
One of the unique things I was going for in my website, was it being almost 100% CSS3, rather than a ton of gradients, textures and illustrations. And that right there should be enough to prove I'm not completely incompetent.
Offering some constructive criticisms would be nice, rather than just telling me to restart the first grade. I am confident in my code, I don't need to relearn HTML.
Trey.
Not to brag but, I've only made 1 topic on here asking for help. And it turned out to just be a stupid thing that the W3C wants us to live with.
Now, what do people with actual experience have to say? I'm interested in hearing from some of the others that critiqued my work before, and really helped.
And just in case anyone has trouble finding the current pic, here it is: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2717/5810201186_1ddf46c091_b.jpg
Trey.
Here's what I think, plain and simple, you decide how constructive it is...
Your code.
Its decent. It's surprisingly readable, although i'd suggest some indentation for more readability. There's some issues with paragraphs inside of list items or improper usage of header tags. In this regard i'd suggest looking at w3schools for what each tags purpose is. As well as work on your layouts. You also say on your site that you know html5, but there is no use of it. Same thing for css3, except in this case, just because you can do it doesn't mean you should, use what you need.
Your Design.
It's bad. I don't want to say it's terrible, it's not, but there's just so many things lacking that I'm not sure how to help you improve any of them. The only thing I applaud you for is wanting to be different. Funny thing about that is when you try to be different you end up with a design that is outside of the box, but also outside of good design. People are inside of the box for a reason, because it works. I suggest if you want to be different think on the edge of the box and only be a little different. Besides that you definitely need to improve your design skills. Try these sites:
These are just some sites that I myself read. You may ask how I read them all? Two words... Feed aggregator. I have a mac so i use Reeder. It helps immensely in reading lots of blogs quickly.
One more quick tip on your designs in general, for your site at least. Your going for a portfolio site, so the one page, dynamically loaded content just doesn't work well at all for that. Try not to push away the html conventions that are standard. And with that thought, standards compliance is also very important.
Okay! So now you know what I think, how about what I think you should do... again you choose if you want to follow these or not...
Steps to becoming an awesome designer in a few short months (perhaps less)...
* As a side note to this list, consider a niche market, no one is a master at everything and focusing your skills on one area will bank you more business as well as make you look more professional.
And just to cheer you up... a few years ago I knew absolutely nothing... about web design, of course.
Finally, be professional, if you want to make money in this business, you got to treat it like one.
GOOD LUCK! And BEST WISHES!
Scubasteve :)
Your friendly neighborhood helper!
Your websites are absolutely poor. There is no other way to state it. I feel like i need to be honest with you, because it's not worth your time to be given minor aesthetic criticisms like, "I don't like how large the font is". Now this is totally excusable if you're a young guy. Are you under the age of 18? Honestly, it's fine if you are. Let us help you. I certainly made some "interesting" art when I was a teenager. It's very clear to me that you do not have any kind of background in design. Web design could be thought of as an extension of a good sense of graphic design, mingled with some technical knowledge. The technical side of things is variable, but accounts for say 10% of a good site aesthetically speaking.
What to do now? Start from the basics. Go to the library and check out some art history books. Read up on Bauhaus, De Stijl, Modernism, Mondrian, Frank Lloyd Wright. Get inspired. Go to a museum. Read some magazines. Find an artist who's work you admire. Tell us why you like it, and why you think the work is "successful". Are you able to take some beginning art classes? Drawing, painting, anything?
For the next several months of your artistic education, you should not touch a computer unless it's posting on this forum, or looking up art. You do not need to read tutorials, because you lack the fundamental design sensibilities REQUIRED to create successful work. Computers tend to be bad for a developing artist. You need to grow.. A LOT...
Shelf your idea of free-lancing as a web designer until you've grown significantly as a designer. If it's truly a passion and you're able to evolve your aesthetic sensibilities, you'll be fine.
Let me know if there's anything I can elaborate further on, or if you'd like some additional advice. Best of luck.
@Treyrust, I believe you're improving in stages which is great. I am using a color similar to the one you chose on the CSS-Tricks charity project along with (@jamy_za and @joshwhitedesign), although it's not set in stone. I think your site would look cool if you use the color (shade of red) of your main section as your background and rethink your typography on the menu. Get rid of the black sections as they really will serve no design purpose.
Something like this.
Take into consideration this was thrown together in a few minutes and I am not sure where you're from so I used Italy.
While some of the criticism here might put you off a little bit, you should be super happy that people are taking the time to comment! From what I've seen it's all been pretty valuable advice.
Nobody starts off as a pro. You've made great strides from your first design and if you keep on going you'll definitely improve.
@ChristopherBurton So, I swallowed my pride a little bit. A http://bit.ly/l2gm5i I just chopped the "treyrust" from your mockup, and did the rest in CSS3. I do like it better. But where does that leave me? I could polish it up from there, should I really just "steal" a part of your mockup? that seems lazy to me...
Note: That picture isn't very good, its a screen cap and the colors on the edges are distorted. I messed with it for about 30 minutes, but its 4AM, so I'm going to bed...
Trey.
Or in english, it is better to steal a good concept, then to create your own that sucks. (not saying your concept sucks, I wouldn't dare saying that with my lack of experience)
I do believe only way you learn is by example. I don't think you are going to be a copycat for trying to do similar website to somebody's while you practice.
I don't want to be cheeky by posting the site that I made recently, but I wanted to get some constructive feedback like you did. For some reason my topic doesn't get the same attention - its called "Latest Version of my New Website" under Other Discussions.
The site is:
http://archgarbev.com/
I am in no way trying to change this discussion of course.
Thank you,
Vasko
I don't believe you stole an idea of my mockup as people work collaboratively all the time. If you want to use the PSD I have for the mockup reply with your email and I'll send it to you.
Typography is not easy, and I think it might be what you are struggling most with right now. Here is a site that I just found (and bookmarked for inspiration!) http://www.f-i.com/infographics/civilwar/
I am constantly comparing and contrasting my own designs to people that I aspire to becoming - it's how you grow!
Swallow your pride, accept that your design skills are awful and your coding is decent. Go read scuba's links, go pick up a design elements book, and get educated in good and bad design.
I'm constantly sucking at something, I mean, I've asked @TheDoc and other masters on this forum more questions than I care to remember -- the best way to approach learning is to accept that you know NOTHING and you are never THE BEST. It's a Plato thing. Also the fact that you compared your site to Chris Coyler's is arrogant as all get out.
I...... I'll try!
@ChristopherBurton You can just send it to: trey {{at}} treyrust . com
@TheDoc Yes, I do have quite a bit of trouble with typography. It's the last thing I put into a website, and I try and design them so that its boxed off and "safe" from messing with the design itself.
Trey
Little boxes are fine - you'll find them all over the place in great designs, but they are usually have a far lesser impact on the design. Take a look at this site, for example. There are boxes everywhere but they don't feel like 'boxes' - they are functional and simply separate separate ideas of content.
Typography, color theory, layout (visual design), graphics...all need to work together to create an interesting and harmonious whole. (and please don't think I'm preaching from the mountain top here: I'm still trying to learn all these pieces and put them together myself!).
Knowing the 'rules', for lack of a better term, isn't an impediment to originality; it's a prerequisite. Even a kick-ass, totally original site like this is rooted in a thorough understanding of all the aforementioned elements. @scubasteve has given you a great list of resources to aid in learning (I'll be digging through them also, as well as following some of his advice).
It's all a process of learning and improving; you've improved your design through this process, and I'm sure it will continue to improve. Just don't be afraid to make a clean, conventional design for now -- that you can then use as the base for your explorations into originality as you learn and grow.
Chris
I've been working on both for years now, but I've only ever put them together a handful of times.
My art standalone isn't half bad (says me), but when I try and make it a functional website, it falls flat, because I don't have experience in typography, for example. I can do pretty graphics, but not a pretty website.
I'm going to study typography and put some of that into the new design, and see how it goes.
Trey
Walk first. Then run. I studied product design at University, and whilst it's a slightly different area of design, I learned all the conventions. I was then able to twist them for myself to apply my own originality.
However, if I hadn't have done my degree and learnt so much about design, I feel my work now would be on a similar level to yours. I am not saying you have to do a degree but I think you should first, before you make websites, learn more about design in a broader sense, study the conventions and practises, learn all about "Total Design", learn how to draw a QFD, trust me in the long run it will stand you in good stead, you need a foundation to build upon
Good luck.
I've been studying design for years. I'm not a newbie, I've always been fascinated by design in general. And believe that I have a firm understanding of good design.
It's just, you can "understand" it to infinity, but that's not going to make the first websites I make good.
My problem here is, I have been working on everything individually, not together. I have probably made less than 10 overall sites. The rest where to learn CSS/HTML. I've done tons of graphic design in Gimp, but it was only to learn Gimp.
And I'm aware that my designs suck. I wouldn't say they are horrible. But I know they aren't as good as some that are out there.
Trey.
Don't know if it's a good idea, but thought I'd throw it out there. :)
Chris
My advice is to build a portfolio. The easiest way I can think to do that is to put yourself for hire IMMEDIATELY on 99designs.com. And then design. And design. And do not stop. Do not be satisfied with less than 100% of your effort.
You got this. Just get it slowly.
http://www.27bslash6.com/missy.html
Sorry Trey if I'm wrong! Anyway most of the advice here is good stuff, you do need to go (spend a long time) looking at some inspiring examples and reading though (of which which there are thousands out there on dedicated sites as per recommends above. I'm on a similar road with coding problems currently. Just don't give up!
You might as well give up altogether if you go down that route.
Why? It's a good way to have real clients, and use real briefings. You gain a lot of experience just by designing, so what is the issue?
There are far better, respectful ways of gaining clients. You work hard, first off by putting together small projects for friends and family. You won't get loads of dollar, but they'll probably buy you a case of beer or whatever. Then the more you do, and the better the get, the more likely people will then pass your name on and you benefit from word of mouth. Then with your experience, you can start to charge a bit, and build up a portfolio.
Websites like 99designs encourage speculative work, and spec work is a horrible disease among the design community which should be eradicated as soon as possible.
Please, whatever level you are at, don't lower yourself to "competing" for work like a bunch of dogs.
I worked hard freelance from the bottom and built myself up and I now have a full time job as a developer/designer. Did I have to gain my experience on 99designs? Abso-effing-lutely not, I can't think of anything more degrading or worse. I don't believe for a second anybody serious about their profession as a designer or developer would ever step foot on that website.
Experience is key, and gaining experience from a good briefing is in my opinion better then gaining it from a local store owner who doesn't know what he wants.
And why would you not be able to use designs that didn't got picked? They show what you can do. And you don't have to say on your portfolio that it is from a design contest. Just say it is a redesign. As long as it looks good, no one cares.
I actually wrote an article on my distaste for spec work, and why, on Speckyboy. Feel free to look it up to see more of my reasons why I am absolutely against spec work.
Great for a designer in answering briefs to practice skills as a hobby, not so great for sustainable income. Just my two frankfurters.
If I'm going to be doing a bunch of work that isn't going to get used, why should I even bother trying to give it to somebody? I think it would be best just to design sites in my own time. Rather than competing for a 'prize'
Trey.
Honesty, I didn't think the first design was as terrible as some are saying. The second design you posted, well I actually thought it was worse.
But, this forum is for feedback. Not for ranting about how the OP lacks skills.
Sure, his designs could use improvement. But I really don't like the tone that is being set...
My two cents :)
Keep in mind, its just a proof of concept, the big grey box will have a website in it once I'm done. And I will play around with the colors and shadowing. The text isn't final and the mockup is NOT done. I see where I'm going to improve it, I'm just looking for a bit of feedback in the meantime.
Trey.
Now I'd look at the white space around the text in the nav - needs a bit more room to breathe.
In the right sidebar there, don't tab in your paragraphs.
I'm not sure about the arrow mark on the nav and how it just kind of juts out there. It's not really integrated with anything. I'd say try expanding the menu bar as Doc suggests, and maybe either make the focus/hover made the font color red, or maybe like a red or gray line that somehow works with the nav bar itself.
So, thanks for (the few) who where encouraging while I was doing this, even though I've decided to not pursue web development as a career (we'll continue with this in a bit) it was nice knowing that I had some support.
I think there are three main reasons why my designs here sucked...
1) I was in it for the money: Not to be brash but I think I'm a pretty decent designer when it comes to computer graphics. But as all of you should know, you can't do art if you're not in the right mindset.
In this case, I was trying to rush and get past my first website so I could start talking to other people and get more websites done so I could start making money as soon as possible because! I had a deposit on a German Shepherd pup, I had a major deadline and was getting more and more stressed each time I make a new revision. I think my first design here was the best because I actually put some heart into it (even though I definitely could have touched it up a bit). Each time a did another revision I was running on even less time than before so each design got less and less heart.
With this new design I made some revisions, but was messing around with Linux and did the n00b thing and reformatted my whole disk and lost that revision (in my defense, it was arch and it had the most confusing partition manager I've ever seen), once it was gone I completely ran out of motivation to do more work, because I just sat there with photoshop open thinking "I have to make something great, something fast, something now! I've got 20 days left on photoshop I need to do it in that time-frame to buy photoshop so I can keep going!" instead of "Hmm, so, what do I want for this website..." You see? I also need to start making money so I can move away from my parents and a job as Burger king is NOT an option.
I ended up getting my deposit back on the GSD, since it had gotten to a point where I couldn't do unless I was under the most random/pig flying luck ever which, knowing MY luck wouldn't happen... Since great art takes time I stopped here.
2) I was under a lot of stress... From needing to make $950 for the GSD and from a lot of other stuff going on at the time. Long story short I was actually working really hard to stop a Siberian Husky from going to the pound and all these things combined really stressed me the most I've ever been my entire life and my GOD I never want to be there again... Seriously, I was having cricopharyngeal spasms (there isn't a shorter word, I looked...) every day and if you don't know what that is, imagine having a lump the size of a golf-ball in your throat, everyday...
3) I was ONLY doing it for the money... Sure, I enjoy throwing a website together, it's kinda fun and I still have dreams to make a social networking site or something along the lines of google/yahoo... But doing it for strangers and a few bucks? It's something I enjoy but not something I want to do all the time everyday.
One of my true passions is game development, I was only doing web development because again, I was trying to get out of the house as well. I had gotten intimidated by C++ when I started learning it because I was trying to do to much to soon and I had this huge mental brick wall up. Once I stopped doing web development, I started messing with IRC, I wanted to make an IRC bot again because my roots in scripting where from mIRC and that was something I enjoyed. I got fed up with the limitations of mIRC script because I had used javascript and the likes so I was spoiled in what I could do with them...A now friend pointed me to just straight Perl and eventually I ended up trying to do it in ruby with the cinch framework, while I was making something in Ruby (and very refreshingly enjoying desktop coding) I thought to myself "If I can do Ruby this well, is C++ really that hard? If nothing else I'll just learn it the way I did with ruby in, what a couple of weeks?" so then I picked up a C++ book again and started learning that, I got fed up with "the ruby way" as I started to fall in love with C++ and continued to learn and program with it.
I put a lot of work into a text based adventure game and came close to finishing it, but then lost interest because my scope kept getting bigger and I realized I should just rewrite the whole thing to avoid bugs. Then I picked up SDL which I had become intimidated by, in a similar fashion to the way I was with C++ but not as strong, I started doing it again and realized why it Sdl, freaking SIMPLE Direct media Layer. With an emphasis on SIMPLE, seriously, underline it, capitalize it, put it in italic and make it bold it's simple!
At this point I'm almost done with a pong clone, I've gotten the physics working beautifully and now I just have to implement AI which should be cake and well as scoring which IS trivial.
How do I like what I'm doing now? I LOVE it! It's something I'm doing because I want to do it, not because I need to make money. Sure, the money thing is there, but I figure I'll just live under my parents roof and code full time to take advantage of the situation I'm in. Because right now I can code 24/7 if I got a joke... Er, job at crystals I would probably be to tired to code when I got home so I'm definitely gonna take some time to do what I want to do. Remember, the reason I was doing web development was I was scared of game development.
So, I'll make another website at some point, I'll do it in another thread to dissociate myself from this disaster. At this point I want a blog, a place for a resume for my programming projects that I want to show off. It won't need to look great because I'm just going to house a blog and a resume and since people aren't going to hire me from my website anymore I can relax and will probably make a much better one in the process. Don't be surprised if you see wordpress go up with someone else's theme and a little blog on my website.
So, sorry for resurrecting this old thread, but I figured it was justified since I wanted to give a reason as to why these designs sucked and dissociate myself from them and at least give the reason why I created them. I don't want archive hunters (or people that know me that find this from stalking me on google, or someone looking at my profile on here) to think I just flat out suck.
Later,
~Trey.
There's nothing wrong with buying a theme and creating a blog to showcase products you've developed. Actually, I would encourage it as you're also supporting a designer.
I'm sure a lot of us have second guessed if we wanted to pursue this profession as a career. We all get frustrated in this industry for many reasons related to our work so I can understand not wanting to recreate what you've lost in Photoshop. You have to learn to laugh at that kind of stuff. But I wish you well and success in game development.