Preliminary critique

[I'mNicole]

Heya everyone.

I'm generally a big fan of simple, elegant websites. I like content to be contained and not all over the place. So yep, big fan of boxes, basically. With that in mind, here are my two roughs.

The first one has more variety with fonts and includes some color. The image is a picture of my new library and displays my bookworm nature. I would typically put the links within the box somehow, but this time decided to be wild and put the black bar at the top. I'm not sure if I like how it turned out, really; it almost has too much white space hanging around.

The second one is my personal favorite. It's strictly black and white and offers great contrast, which I enjoy. It's simple and to the point and very minimal, which is my usual style. The image also makes me smile, because that's so me. I'm not a social person and I don't care for people who talk and talk and talk. So yep, I often have the urge to just "shh!" I also focused it on the right side versus the customary left, because I like to stand outside the box, haha.

Both of these layouts offer only one facet of me, because I don't like to give it all away on first glance. Mwaha. Any constructive criticism is super appreciated!

Probably my one most inspirational website is The Fanlistings (http://thefanlistings.org/approved.php), because you can go to this one website and find links to over 17,000 more. I like to just browse them and see what other people are doing, and that in turn gives me lots of ideas. A lot of them are kind of the same and get repetitive, but there are some really awesome sites on there. My other inspirational site is http://www.k4lab.info/, which is an online portfolio for a Polish boy I've never personally met. It's just so pretty, and the animation is subtle and effective. He has other web designs linked on there that are cool too.

[jennybreitrick]

Yea the bottom on is my favorite too! Have you tried to expand the image and it text to half the size of the page?(A symmetrical balance) You may end up losing some of your image…but that may pull more of the mysterious aspect of it out. I love what you did for the text box for your projects, very cool. But for your info about you, what if you “unbox yourself” (per say) and let you be contrasted against your background…like the high black and white contrast…way cool designs though!
jen

[mawpe]

Hi Nicole, I also enjoy the contrast of the black and white of the second one but I also like the seperated photo on the first one. you are right about that k4lab site, pretty awesome

[Landsknecht]

Hi Nicole,

I'm not really a fan of super-minimalistic webpages, but you have some nice designs. I'm also a fan of the second page, the black and white one. I'm not sure how small the type will be in the final, but it seems a "little" small. You have nice photos in both designs and your type choices work for me, so I'm not sure if I can give you helpful feedback.

Great work,

Jeremy Winkler

[Alexey M]

Second one is more interesting for me. Nice composition, navigation and layout by itself. Also like first one for its simplicity and its kinda hard a little bit to read the fonts on the first layout. In a whole good job!

[gokudera08]

it looks good but theirs a bit to much white-space i think its just to open.

[DustDjinn]

I'm dying for the second one Nikki! Its so clean and refined, Is that Anna Hathaway as the woman? Anyways, the first one is great I love the composition and the white doesn't feel like unused space which is hard to do.


Good job.

[re8ecca]

Hi Nicole - I give you props for proposing the most avant-garde design I've seen yet. Since you've said that that's your favorite, I'm going to focus on it. I think your image is strong and it provides a nice grainy texture. I think you need to work on the geometric shapes that are providing your structure though. I'm not feeling any kind of unity between the thin white lines above, and the white text box below. They need to twine together somehow.

The fonts are troubling me. They look tiny and pixelated. It's pretty hard to focus in on white text on a black background, so for legibility, I'd recommend trying to make things a bit larger, or searching for the friendliest reverse-type made (Dan has suggested Franklin Gothic for these situations, and I've used it myself).

[Heyyou]

I prefer the first layout. The layout has a great focal point. I like the use of the alternating b&w and color photo in the book shelves. I think using a small area as a container for all of a website's information and to use the whitespace to attract the eye to it can be successful. It think the type on both layout needs to be bigger and given a little more space to stand out from the artwork. You can make either one work because they are both nice starts.

[nunezm]

Hi Nicole,
The second layout is my favorite. It really shows who you are. But there is no too much wait space try centering the elements, make them bigger for example the text. Other then that its organized and easy to navigate. Great start!