Kaylyn Dazey Project @

[dazey_duck]

Hello everyone and sorry for posting late. I work the mortgage industry and the market sort of exploded out of no where, so I regrettably feel behind in my work. That being said my website of choice is http://renorealtyblog.com/. The site is a blog created by the real estate agent, guy Johnson. As I had mentioned the housing and mortgage market has boomed and for whatever reason many realtors have chosen to pick and choose what platforms of technology they want to promote their business in. Web and design in general do not fall under those categories. I wanted to redesign Guy's website because the layout itself is about ten years old and it has a lot of impact in the community being the number one real estate blog. I wanted to make the site look clean, modern and easy to look at. I also wanted to make sure client testimonials were on the home page they could prove that Guy is as great as the information he provides on his blog.

[rmiyashiro]

The second design works much better for me. All of the red in the first design makes me uncomfortable and makes it look like there's a bunch of ads. The lower opacity mountains of the second design also works better for me. That guy looks like NPH.

[dzynecin88]

Hi Kaylyn - Nice job cleaning up and organizing this information heavy site. I prefer the second set of roughs with the black side bar - looks rich and professional. Also, I prefer the color in the banner image and the realtor's pic pops off nicely.

[Ryan_Hartman]

It's very well organized and the simple color pallet makes it easier to read the text. But the text might need to go up a few points because it's hard to read. I like the mountain imagery but it might need more opacity because it brings more life to the site and shrink down the face to half because he's not the true center of attention but it's what he want to achieve, hence his logo and blog name.

[lornrocks]

I think your second layout idea is better than the first one. I like the header being more opaque and less screened out a lot more. Your color scheme is better with that one as well. Maybe break up your text on the second page so it's easier to read? Add subheads or something? It looks very professional and realtor-like.

I'm not sure what the person would like for their blog but I think it would be cool if you experimented with a more more design. Try using unique typefaces or effects or something. But other than that, this is great.

[Instructor]

I think your second design is the strongest. Go with that one!

I like the contrast of the black secondary navigation bar combined with a white content area. The mountain image up at the top adds a splash of color to the high contrast design. The navigation, both primary and secondary is easy to find and use. You have a large content area in which to put a variety of content layouts into. I like the sans-serif type used for the title, headline, and bodycopy. It gives the design a strong sense of unity.

One of the things I really like about your first design is the use of drop shadows to add depth. I think bringing those drop shadows over to the second design would add a nice little bit of visual interest. I'd probably bold the navigation at the top and make it the same sans-serif font that the secondary nav to the right. You also probably want to enlarge the "Latest RRB Posts" and "Latest RRB Comments" areas. I'd also add spacing between the paragraphs of the bodycopy.

Nice work, Kaylyn!

[kaycee_weddell]

I really like your second design with the mountain and the sunset. It seems more inviting than the other design. The only thing I would maybe work on is that white circle around the guys head. With this color scheme it just looks too bright. Maybe try a cream color or getting rid of it completely. Overall great job!

[ravens.way]

Your designs look very good. The second one stands out more to me. It is sharp and easy to read.

[gr8ful1]

Both designs are good, but I prefer the second I think. I like the sunset picture being at full opacity, it adds nice color. I did have to look around to find the navigation bar at the very top though, I think I'd move it under the header like you had in the first design. I also like the button idea you had for the left side links, I would incorporate into this design somehow so that they stand out as clickable links. My only other suggestion is that your navigation bar and your left side links have some repeats, like 'search for property' and 'contact'. I think you could pick one location for them, if you keep them in the side bar you could take them out of the navigation bar and the navigation bar would be less cluttered. Good job!

[raoki]

The original website is so boring looking... so good job for those two nice designs!
I'd probably choose the first design if the color combination was different because I learned red and black means the most evil when I was taking a storyboard class before. So such as vivid pink and dark grey could be a good standing out color combination.

Everything matches nicely for the second design, especially I like the color scheme!