Here is some very rough roughs for Project 2.

[Unicorn_Service]

My site is the thriving metropolis of Orderville. Founded as an old pioneer town, it has about 500 people. It is like the Virginia City of Utah. It wasn't that the site was explicitly bad, it was just greatly outdated. You can view it today. Nobody has updated it since 2006. My work is to make it modern and not look so 2000s. Help me out here guys.

In the research of other city websites, here is how others are designed:
Reno
Salt Lake City
Las Vegas

They all have a calendar events, and services of all city ordinances.
They all have a .gov domain. What does it take to get one of those? After all, Orderville is a political entity. It's an incorporated city with its own mayor and city government.

[stars2night]

I really love the background and the orange. I like the buttons, but I might suggest clarifying what "Pay" means. You may want to add navigation to the top in small text under Orderville for like photo gallery, town statistics, phone numbers, etc. I really love how some of your rival links have done their calendar and events, especially Reno. I find Vegas' links over a moving gif pretty cool. I like how simple you are keeping it though. It feels more in keeping with the town. I think that you could expand at the bottom on who is city council and instead of plopping the Mayor's name at the bottom. Do a cute little section for it. I love your direction. Keep it up!

[John1612]

Hi classmate this is Charlie Johnson:

I really do enjoy how the page is simple to understand, you give good direction. The page flow is perfect. I like how the natural background scene looks like a painting gives me the feel of a elementary school website. I don't know if that what you were going for. I think the population548 could be much bigger in the computer version it gets los, and for the mobile one I think it is perfect as is.

[lewlewland]

I like how straight forward and simple these designs are. They don't have anything to over bearing but they're also well enough designed to be interesting.

Lewis

[Andramada]

Your design is very simple which aides to the ease of navigation. The color palette of desaturated oranges is very complimentary to the dessert background uses in the back ground. This is very pleasing to look at, I’m curious if the city is actually in the desert if so this design is definitely working that element of giving a sample of the city with out overwhelming the visitor. The font reminds me of sports teams and if the city does not have a huge sports team in it I would choose a font that is more reminiscent of the olden times that is mentioned the city is styled after.

[Gr8K8]

A much needed update to the existing layout.
What you've got so far is very straightforward, clean, and easy to navigate. I like your square nav buttons. Very pleasing to look at and they look like they'd be satisfying to click on. I do think you could afford to make the font/images slightly larger though.
Also, I noticed on all your reference websites, the photos they all use are very bright and in your face. They show off a bit of the area they are representing. In comparison, your photo is almost unnoticeable due to how muted it is. I would definitely make those pictures more visible in your final layout.
I agree with Charlie that the size of the "population" text in your computer version could be larger.
I would also suggest for your mobile version to move everything under the banner down to the vertical center of the page.
Interested to see the final results.

[z1claudia]

Hi, I like the colors you have for your designs and it's simplicity is nice, but as a viewer I have no idea what your design is about. I only know that it's a pioneering city through your description. So that's the only critique I can give you is to make it clear in your home page what is Orderville and/or where is it.

[Instructor]

Very rough indeed. I also don't see an inner page or a second design for that matter. We don't have a lot here to critique.

But to give you some feedback on what is there, I like where you are going. It has an old west newspaper feel. I like the type choices throughout the layout. They really reinforce that feeling. I generally like the colors (except the red headline). The aged paper top bar and the fain orange of the background phot work well. The background photo really is super nice. It establishes place and landscape and reinforces the old west feeling. It also provides a great color palette for the rest of the website. I find your navigation structure interesting; app like quick link buttons that take you to critical info throughout the site. Certainly easy to see and use.

What I think it needs most strongly are some images of the town. Right now you have a great background image and not much else. Maybe some quick stats on the home page like the population you have currently. I'm not sold on the red type at the top. I think the type would look better in black, like a newspaper headline. The font is fine though.

A good start! I would have liked to see more.