Click...now!

Please check out this also.

What do you guys think think of the lauyout/the stuff there/the funniness/etc.?

And, just so this post isn't too boring:

hehe... "Evlolution"

Highlighting your text on the navi bar just to do it is a bad idea. As well as scrolling text. Oh, and black and blue are really displeasing, especially with your fade bars and such. Even moreso with the box up in the corner. Go witha metalic grey, and keep everything industrial looking. Maybe rivets on the corners, make the headers convexes off of the box with rivets holding it on, etc. That'd be a bit more themed, as well as pleasing to the eyes, not to mention less... angelfire-ish.

JediKirby

Yeah, I can't spell for the life of me, need to fix that.

Jedikirby, yeah...that would look good, I'll have to wait till I get a newer version of photoshop though. 5.0 LE is pretty hard to do metal in, I did the current gradients in MSpaint...it was a nightmare .


I will hate you for all time for that :p .

You can do it easily with MS-Paint. In fact, it's more suggested. You don't want the background to take all the attention. Make a simple gray background that is identifiable as a metal box because it corrisponds and resembles the box up in the corner, as well as bolts and rivvets, etc. KISS.

I kept looking at this site and tried desperately to find some kind of appeal, and sadly I couldn't. I mean no disrespect, but it is awful. The highlighted text, the stark blue gradients, the 3D borderd tables for your main menu to name a few examples.

I was originally just going to try to ignore this thread and let it slip unnoticed into the rest of the forum but that wouldn't help you out at all. Unfortunately the only help I can offer is utilize the PHP coding, but rework the entire site design. Use a professional website (not massassi...) as an example if you need to, despite the unoriginality it will at least present you with the basic principles of aesthetics in design which in turn will give you a solid foundation to work on.

Sorry I cant offer you much more than that and the flame at the beginning. I'm not trying to be beligerant, but it needed to be said.

[EDIT: and welcome to the forums, sorry I couldn't give you a warmer welcome ]

Don't worry about it.
What about this.
It's another site I made for my mom's poodle business(sp?).

Its better, but not by much, theres so much more you can be doing with this. Push your limits man. Im trying not to judge to harshly as my first couple of sites were absolute crap and I remember how long it took to start to see what I was lacking and what made my stuff differ from professionals. I still have my own faults I'm trying to get over. Keep at it and someday youll be looking at these sites the way I see them.

Links for your education:

[url]www.flashkit.com[/url] - For all your flash development needs (I learned most of what I know about flash thanks to this site)

[url]www.phong.com/tutorials/[/url] - Basic photoshop ideas that will spawn many others, also has some good links to more tutorials

[url]www.google.com[/url] - duh

Another bit of advice is don't look to inexperienced people for design advice, though there are exceptions, most of their ideas will be based on what they think looks good and will generally lead you back to the beginning with a different looking design that is still ugly. Granted in a professional situation thats a daily occurance (clients aren't usually designers either), you'll learn eventually to bend their ideas to your benefit so that they get what they want and it doesnt look like they designed it.

Good luck!

Ahhh! Marquees! Get it off me! Get it off meee!!

Avoid the font Times New Roman like the plague when it comes to site design. Unless you can really work it in, it's just awful. Try to use fonts like Verdana or Trebuchet MS or any other non-serif font.

I mean no disrespect when I say this but it really looks noobish. I don't mean to put you down. By all means do continue to learn site design but, you should NEVER publish your first workings.

While it's all functional, you do need to work on your designs a bit. I can't offer much advice other than what's just been posted, but I can offer help if you need it...
switched.on at gmail.com
hit that up if you ever need some critique, help, ideas or whatever. I remember when I first started html at 12 (7 years ago, wow), and I made my first couple of web pages. Yeah, I was psyched up about them, but never showed anyone except my parents. Hell, one of my earlier designs is still floating around on the internet. It's horrible, and people still visit it (archived files...), and I wish every day that I could remember the login so I could take it down, hehe

So yeah, look at other professional sites and see what common features you can ID and what other stuff you can glean from the layout and code.

I'm not sure how old you are, but is if you're still in school and your art department is good, I'd recommend some design or web-design classes if you can take em. I was blessed with an awesome art department, and took extreme advantage of it. We had graphic design classes, web design classes, computer graphic classes, all available at least to a second year. I took 4 years of computer graphics and graphic design, and it was the best damn thing ever.

Sorry for the rant...Just trying to encourage the talent.

Thanks everyone! I'm suprised to be getting so much help from my first topic, I was just ignored elsewhere.

This was an expirmental design I used for a subsite for my book, is this any better than the others.

Yeah, i started learning when I was 10, i'm 15 now. IronBox was quick slap-together really, the design is almost 3 years old now (in least one of wich was spent on my hard drive) I'm reworking it now, going for a more metal feel.

Edit:I was going through some of the tutorials on phong when I came a across one (most actually) that tell you to use channels...what are channels? I'm using Photoshop 5 LE...are they only in newer versions? Or am I just an idiot and don't know where this channels window is?

It's been about 10 years since ive used photoshop 5 haha so I couldnt tell you

The madness site is a bit more creative, it the graphics were cleaned up a little it would be tons better.

I'm proud of you that youre looking at this constructively and not getting pissed off at everybody for telling you the truth. That shows a lot of maturity.

Thanks, Wow...was that actually a compliment?
Just Kidding.

I need to get a new version of Photoshop anyway, 5 LE has been haveing major problem latley, stupid crashing .

Anyway, I'll post whenever I get the new IronBox done.

Sorry about the double post...but...

The new IronBox logo!
Now with new and improved bolty goodness!

What program did you make the box in? I think it could be improved with some better textures. IMO it should have a more reflective metal texture, and maybe some rust to break up the surface a bit.

She was modeled in Anim8tor
[url]www.anim8or.com[/url]

Yeah, I'll se about adding some shine and maybe a bit of rust...

Well, I made a test header for the site, and I worked on the box...

I think I went a little overboard on the rust though...

What do you guys think.

And the header test...

Try this, take that box (the one you added rust to) and iconize it. By iconize i mean simplify it to the point where its a 2 color (black and white obviously) logo that can be printed very small or very large and still be recognizable. No 3d programs just pencil and paper first.

Okay Jedi-Sal I give you...
...
some really bad drawing :D, so...why exatly did I do this?

spend some time on it man, ill give you an example sometime tomorrow as its like 5am and im burning for sleep, youll see what I mean

Sorry, it was rushed...
Any better? (Photoshop...ed?)

thats the idea, keep playing with ideas. The one I was going to do was make the shadow part the only part thats black and the rest white, it will give it a more 3-d look yet still be iconic. Post what you come up with if you want

edit - make sure you pay attention to the shape and perspective. If you need to render the actual box in a position you like and *gasp* trace it. It will look better that way anyway.

here is an example, but the more tilted box you did would look better like this, I just used the image with the rust as a guide

I liked your image...but it has a few errors and differences from my logo. Then I just relized that i could mess with the 3D box so that it's 2 color...thusly I give you:

Attempt number 2:

I like the first of those last two.

Yeah me too, that one's neat.

That's the one that was actually rendered in 3D, I kinda like it more myself.