[Project 1] Preliminary

[SerenDark]

Hello! So, these are my two concepts for the website.
The first concept is the one that I feel is stronger. It's easily comprehensible visually, has room to breathe, and the colors and layout seem easy to look at. It's a bit of a clean design? I envision this design with parallax layering/scrolling and further vertical arrangements, transparency, and other elements, for dynamism.

The second concept was a result of me messing around with expressive possibilities. I like the idea and feel that it could be cool if put into use, but I do not think that it is currently at the stage where it's entirely successful? The space can be used a lot better, I think, though I'm not sure how. I do not envision this concept as having anything like parallax. I like it for being still fairly clean and flat even through the more expressive elements. It also feels personal, almost like a blogging website.

As for websites, I found it hard to pick two.
There are a lot of websites with the following sort of open and clean style that I really like:
One, two, three

I also took inspiration from more expressive and "messier" sites and sites where the elements are close together in a condensed sort of fashion such as the following:
One, two

I would say that the first choice for both of the above groups would be my two inspiration choices, as in general they encompass what I tried to incorporate into my own concepts.

I used Harry Potter Ipsum for placeholder text.

[Instructor]

Good! Fight those design squares.

I like your second design best. It has a whimsical, literary, steampunk quality to it. I like the hand/painted drawn feel it has. The layout does a good job of masking the blockiness that comes with website building. Since websites are a set of squares, you see a kind of building block quality to it and using sweeping, non-square shapes for your background images does a good job of concealing it. Your ribbon navigation buttons do a good job of concealing it too. I also like the way they reinforce the "book" feeling of the website. The navigation is easy to see and use along with being attractively designed. Color is another good aspect of this design. The colors are warm and antique feeling. They reinforce the warm, stolid feel of it, while selling that this is a book-like structure. Your type does a good job of theming, as well. I'm not usually a fan of handwriting fonts, but here it works. Heck, I can even read it, which is more than I can say for a lot of handwriting fonts.

Just a few small tweaks for it, really. Bold and enlarge your name at the top. It's getting a little lost in your top bar. Move your name up a little too so there's some space between it's baseline and the bottom of your top bar. Give everything a little room to breathe. Make sure the text in your buttons is vertically centered as well.

Nicely done!

[chaytothet]

I absolutely love the ipsum as a side note.

I really like the first one, it feels stronger as you had mentioned.

I don't know where you found that picture, but it's awesome.

The only thing I can pick out of it is the "welcome" the c looks like an e! I don't know what you want to do with that information, but Boom. now you have it.

Design on.

[selvster5000]

Dang girl, I like that first design a lot!!

The over style is cool and looks well put together. I also like that dark blue color scheme. And
that diamond in the center there is perfect. You might try to spread the bottom portion out more
so it matches the top??

Great job though I likeY!!

[susielang]

Hi Olivia,

I really love the photo in your first design. The whole layout is great. Love the diamond. Where did you get the photo? Maybe make your name more prominent? I like the typefaces you chose.

[Pearl_Underwood]

These are definitely different. I would have to go with the first. Very cool photo. For some reason I thought of Dracula. Very nice.

[Ariesboxsye]

The first one hands down for me, I love the over all color theme that comes with it. The image is nice, it might help the fact I know where its from too as it matches something I know for a fact your interested. However, the font just doesn't work for me, this dark blue color theme and snowy castle city in the image itself and yet the font you use is commonly used in postcard vacations. My suggestion is to play with some font styles more.

[Kyler_Rose]

Overall View:
Both of your websites are very nice looking but I think project one will fit better later on for a website only because template two may deform and distort on smaller devices.

Project 1:
It is extremely clean and organized I really enjoy the background, the only thing i find wrong with it is that the gray boxes the text its in seems some what out of place. Either change the color of the boxes or find a way to bring that gray into the design some more.

Project 2:
This Template I love the over all look of the book, the colors are nice, but the color for the back of the ribbon is hard to see against the dark purple.

[erika.murray]

Olivia, both of your designs are awesome! I personally like the first one best - the color scheme and the layout are excellent. The only thing I would change is putting your name and contact somewhere else on the page.
I love the illustrated feel of your second design, but I feel like the top part of the page (of the book, I'm assuming?) could also use a slight bend to it.
You could go with either of these designs, they are really well thought out.

[breezy]

Hey,

I like your first one better, the only thing I would adjust is the size of the picture banner, make it smaller so you could enlarge the three columns at the bottom. Good job all around!