Project 2 prelim crit

[BreeAnn]

Well, this was a little harder than I expected, I blame Penny...

My bad web site is pennyjuice.com

The original site is targeting childcare centers, pre-schools, and similar so I wanted to keep that theme in my designs.

The design with the kids is pretty rough so please try to ignore the pixel-ation on the letters. If I go with that one, I plan to recreate that entire top part.

The tree design was an attempt to keep some of the original sites imagery. If you go to the site, there's fruit trees all over the place and I drew this one to look like them. I used crayons to keep the kid theme.

I look forward to all your comments.

Thanks!

[KKentera_5000]

Hey there, I think what you have done to improve on this horrendously designed site is working wonderfully in comparison. I like the bottom set of ideas the best I think that it makes a good use of some of the colors that the original site has. Your tagline; "It makes cents" is great too! not sure if that was lifted from the site or not as I did not go that deep into the site, but nonetheless good choice of wording.

If I was to suggest anything it would just be to play around with the saturation and transparency levels of the fruit images, as I see what you are trying to go for in having the header really pop, but I think you might have to find a happy medium between that balance of imagery on top and bottom.

[Adobe WanKenobi]

OUCH! That site hurts to look at.

First off, great job directing your designs towards the target audience. Colors really pop instead of overpowering everything with that horrible 100% yellow background! I love the idea of self illustrating with crayons for your site, I'm sure there are tons of fun ways to use crayon textures and illustrations. The tree designs lack a little variation, without the crayon drawings the design becomes extremely flat and bland.

The "kids" design works well, lively and colorful. Possible make a column for the text on the non-home page and include an image or illustration of the product. I would also play more with the headline on the home page for this one.

Love the concept and fun feel,
Harper

[erose]

Hi BreeAnn:

You picked a tough site to fix, it's awful. You did a great job cleaning it up. That green color you chose for the juice_tree site is great! It can hold a dark & light colored font equally well. So here's the thing about your designs: I think they are both such a strong improvement on your horrible pick, I found myself looking at all four of your roughs as one site. I think you could incorporate both of your roughs into a final design. Maybe your home, about and contact pages with the juice_tree design, and the other inner pages following the juice_kids design (that kid-letter font is too awesome not to use it). Green and brown/orange go well together, so I think it would work out nicely.

I like them both!

[Stephski]

Hello BreeAnn,
Good job on redesigning that website, I was quite surprised at how awful the original one is. I prefer your "tree" design, I like the typeface and colors you chose to work with. I wonder if the navigation would work better as a horizontal bar below your header. I think this type of website could benefit from a large area to sell their product.

[Instructor]

Well, both of your layouts certainly "saned up" the old site. I have to look away from my monitor for a few minutes after looking at that thing.

Your "juice_kids" design is the better of the two, I'd say. I like the cartoon kids holding up the logo. It preserves some of the whimsical nature of the orginal without all the ... blindness. It also reminds me of parachute day in PE for some reason. I like the faded fruit background too. It gives everything a nice texture. The navigation is easy to find and use. Maybe have it be different colors on different pages? Congratulations, you've managed to find a not-horrendous use of Comic Sans as well! That's actually quite an achievement.

I'd pull the line under your logo and let your navigation bar be the horizontal rule the kids are dancing on top of. Watch your margins on the buttons. Proportionately, they're getting rather close to the left and right edges. I'd make sure the text is evenly spaced inside the navigation bar.

Nicely done!

[EduardoG]

Hi BreeAnn,
Both of your designs look great!
My preference between your two web page roughs is "p_juice_kids_home"," because it has so much more color variations than the first design rough,
and the website catchphrase has a better hierarchy rank than the other design!
Advice for the design is to increase the font size for the navigation words and paragraph text.

[IvorHarvey]

Well it's definitely a lot better than the original website for sure! My website also had a crazy neon color scheme going on, which made it really hard to read. So saying that I think you've done a good job toning it down, but still keeping it bright and vibrant with your color choices! I think the second design works a little better with combining color with the background image, and I like how it's transparent so you can still see the fruit background behind the text. The headline image also works better I think in this design, and it really relates it to the fact that these are juices for kids (your target audience)

[elizabeth_mccurdy]

Hi BreeAnn:

Great job I like both ideas. I like the green color you chose for the juice tree site is great! But I will say that I love the kids holding the letter up better. I think it looks good and fun. I think you should put both of your roughs into a final design. I am so excited to see the final work. Good work

[gracelark]

Well that second headline, with the little kids holding up the letters, is damn cute! It's darling, and for me it's the winner. I think you're on to something with the fresh fruit background as well, but I think that you need all the 'What is Penny Juice?' text right there on the homepage. I'm not sold on the quotations around or all caps of "IT MAKES SENSE". If that is their slogan than perhaps you could better integrate it into the headline/logo. I'm also not big on the comic sans-like typeface. I totally see where you're going with that, it has a childish feel, but I don't think it is necessary. I think that a nice classic and fresh type would compliment everything nicely.