Ah-HA! We have our first one of these of the semester.
It looks like you have two equally good designs to choose from here, Ed. The choice of which one to go with is yours.
Your first design has a clean, urban ethic to it with just a hint of mysteriousness. It uses color and lighting to great effect. I love the gradient and backlighting. Each design element is well placed. They have great margins but are not so far apart from each other that the composition looses unity. Your typeface is well chosen. You even managed to use a glow in a non-annoying manner. Your navigation is large and easy to see and use. Your bodycopy is easy to read and perfectly placed. Even your TMCC logo compliments the design.
My only real issue with it is the low quality background image. I'd recommend redrawing the thing in Illustrator so you have a nice clean version of it.
Your second design is every bit as good. Where your first one is smooth and contemporary, this one is futuristic and dynamic. The design is either exploding out from the lower left, or falling into it. I like the use of the bodycopy block as the visual anchor in the document. You don't see that much with websites. The navigation is very easy to see and use and I really like the critical role it plays in the layout. The colors (basically the same ones used on the first design) come off as cool and futuristic. The repeating hexagon theme is cool as well. It really helps the futurism angle on this one.
I think some justified bodycopy would complete the hard, techy edge here. I'd also recommend vertically and horizontally centering each nav button in it's ray.
Good luck deciding between the two.
Awesome work!
