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What do you think?
posted by Emma on 20 Aug 2008
About the new site design, that is? Too spare? Or nice and clean? I thought the basic background could be quite low key so that when pictures and cover designs appear, they are the centre of attention. Is the font legible to everyone? Rob sent me through an idea for a lovely, delicate design yesterday, which made me think 'ooh, site redesign!', but when I started tinkering I couldn't get his lovely light design to look right and it evolved into this. I am less a designer, more a grand tinkerer.
Anyway, thoughts very much welcome. The only changes have been to the CSS and the images so it's a snap to tweak and fiddle. I use Firefox's Developer plug in to 'Edit CSS' in a live browser, so I can see immediately what the changes I make look like. Then I copy and paste that revision into a new doc and upload it. The only thing is you have to be very careful not to hit 'refresh' after tinkering for an hour, as I found yesterday...!
And of course, doing a redesign was a displacement activity to actually uploading some new content for our forthcoming books (which is also very easy, but I got sidetracked by the pretty colours). So those enticing new covers you see in the header up there? More news to come on them later in the day!
Comments: 13
Love it - think it looks clean, elegant and professional - and that it's a great back-drop for the books. But then I do have to confess to minimalist tendencies!
Posted by: fiona robyn | August 20, 2008 09:37 AM
Oooh, too black and too spare is right. Plus I don't think it's displaying right on my Safari browser running under Leopard. And as a personal preference, I don't like seriffed (sp?) fonts, especially big - so the "It's here!" really doesn't work for me.
Following the Olympics discussion yesterday, I'm a bit scared to be anything but totally positive, 'cos you know where I live, but I mean this constructively!
Posted by: John A-W | August 20, 2008 09:38 AM
J, I can take constructive criticism! Indeed, this was the point of this post, to see what you thought. Of course, if you'd have said 'you're clearly too hormonal to be able to design a website, dear', then yes, I might have been tempted to disregard your advice. Let's see what the consensus is!
(Downloading Safari now to see what's what - ta for being my Apple tester!)
//updated
ARGH! John, look away. You're quite right, it looks ghastly in Safari - the fonts aren't loading properly. Stupid Apple. Right - to work!
//updated, still later
Right, fixed in Safari. Sorry about that!
Posted by: Em | August 20, 2008 09:49 AM
I think it looks spiffy and I rather like it!
Eoin
Posted by: Eoin Purcell | August 20, 2008 10:30 AM
I think it looks very sophisticated - but I'm going to sulk about being replaced by George on the home page! :)
Posted by: Sarah Bower | August 20, 2008 11:39 AM
Sorry Sarah!
Posted by: George Mann | August 20, 2008 02:20 PM
Looks very smart & professional, but I miss the flowers :(
Posted by: NaomiM | August 20, 2008 03:33 PM
I like it very much. (And can't wait to see certain covers in larger versions! ;)
Posted by: S.Roit | August 20, 2008 05:34 PM
Phew! Now that it loads nicely, it looks a mile better. With a screen resolution like mine, the fonts look very small though. Maybe my middle-aged eyes are going...
Posted by: John A-W | August 20, 2008 07:45 PM
Colours, layout and typestyles very nice. But viewing shriek-marks (!) as design rather than content, the site does have a high scream level. (Bit like a book launch cocktail party - low signal-to-noise ratio.) Friendly suggestion that you could safely do some thinning - by about 99percent maybe?
Posted by: Nicholas | August 21, 2008 07:48 AM
Nicholas - thanks for the feedback, but I don't really know what you mean. Do you mean literally reduce the number of exclamation marks (I don't see very many)? Sorry to be dense - enlighten me!
Posted by: Em | August 21, 2008 08:17 AM
Umm
I realise there's a law that says websites have to change from time to time (doing a revamp myself) and the new Home page has a nice clean look. But (while trying to remember exactly how it looked last week!) it does seem less distinctive than before. Guess I am missing those snowflakes. But I expect I'll get used to it! AliB
Posted by: Alison | August 21, 2008 09:11 PM
Heh - there are actually *more* snowflakes on this one than the previous! Let's hope any sense of distinctiveness comes from the books, not the site design...
Posted by: Em | August 22, 2008 09:08 AM