[grouch]

Originally Posted by Jon

Do you think this would look good: one of the cars on each side of the "Youngrodders.com" text, facing inwards?

That's what I was going for at first, but had the text shrank too much. I will reduce the cars a little as well as the text and see if it works out better this time.

About the lowest screen size used now, except for PDAs and phones, is 800x600. Taking borders and margins into consideration, I just picked the width out of the air -- 600 pixels. Seeing it on the page it looks like there is room to push that out some without making it look scrunched into the margins, even when I shrink my browser to 780 pixels wide. The cars could stand to be a little smaller, too.

I'll try it with the text dropped down between the windshields and also with it dropped to between the radiators.

Is it handier to have the banner as 3 separate images or all in 1?

[Edited to add:]
3 more PNGs

[grouch]

A couple more images. Text was changed, both color and font. 2nd image shows what it looks like with the same background color as the youngrodders.com page.

[edited to add:]
2 more images. I think banner-6 is it, but then I'm not the intended audience.

Another image. Has klassik100 seen how I've mangled his work?

[Sir Joab]

The first thing that came to mind when I saw the colors of the site was "Iraq"... but I soon got past this.

I'm certainly not an expert at color schemes, but I think it needs a little more contrast somewhere. Not necessarily in other colors, but in the "lights and darks". Just an opinion.

[MrPhotographer06]

i like the current "banner" logo.

and the colors need to be darker..

i love these colors.. well its all black.. but its dark.. and the yellow text color..

you need to reverse it or youngrodders..

just a tad darker..

=P.

also.. can i join?

[grouch]

I keep tinkering with it.

[edited to add:]
Back to the original text, moved the 'y' closer, made a mask of the text, filled with gradient, compressed length, reduced cars, dropped the text between the radiators, cropped the image. Shown with transparent background (typically shows white in a browser) and with the youngrodders.com background.

Done for the night.

[grouch]

A few more images. Need some indication of which ones are headed in the wrong direction or which way people want them to go.

[Jon]

Maybe we can think of a way to thematically integrate the car image with the logo text. Otherwise, the text is going to look slapped-on.

Ideas:

--Make the text in a sepia-color, or sepia-tones, so it matches better.
--Enclose both the car and the text in some sort of box or frame.
--Make the text a part of the scene, like "Youngrodders.com" is smoke coming out of the car's tailpipe, or tracks that the car just made on the screen, or a road that the car just drove down, or the car is somehow dotting the dot in the ".com" part of "Youngrodders.com", etc.


---
Agreed that we could use more contrast. I'll work on that.

[rebelbill1972]

What about a building of some sort in the back ground with the logo as the name on the roof and the car pulling up to park?

RB

[Jon]

...getting closer

Here's a design with more contrast: Youngrodders.com, and, this time, I picked the color codes directly out of the logo, so everything matches a little better. For example, the main background color is the color from the lighter side of the grille in the logo. The header background is the color of the kid's arm, etc.

Still not sure how to integrate the "Youngrodders.com" text, so I've removed it for now.

rebelbill -- maybe the building could be a shop or garage of some sort?

[home brew]

I'm not sure if you have noticed but by flipping the logo from its original direction you now have a hot rod with right hand drive.

[Jon]

Ah, good call, I hadn't noticed at all. Fixed: Youngrodders.com.

[grouch]

Originally Posted by home brew

I'm not sure if you have noticed but by flipping the logo from its original direction you now have a hot rod with right hand drive.

Are those not allowed, or what?

The car going to viewer left, while positioned at the left edge, is making use of an old trick in paint, print and movies: it creates tension in the viewer. Alfred Hitchcock was good at it. Notice all the B movies and splatter movies make use of it. You always have lots of useless screen on whichever side the unsuspecting victim is ~not~ travelling and you know the psycho with the ungrounded electric weedwhacker is lurking just out of sight in the sliver of screen toward which the victim ~is~ going.

Toward what unknown, unseen horror is that young rodder rushing? We see where he's been, but the edge of the screen is either a wall or a cliff.

Originally Posted by Jon

Still not sure how to integrate the "Youngrodders.com" text, so I've removed it for now.

Why does it have to be integrated? Check the Hotrodders.com logo. The text is not part of the garage, the car nor the tools.

If you had a garage, you could logically use the text as a sign on the roof or wall or door. Maybe a kid bent over pushing a relic in one end of the garage, the Youngrodders.com sign on the side, and the finished rod coming out the other side. I think it would be a bit too heavy on the graphics, but as I said before, I'm not the target. (As it is, I think the car is still a bit too large).

[home brew]

Grouch - because you saw the logo after it was changed you do not understand what I said. Originally the logo was flipped so the driver was on the other side of the car making it right hand drive.

As far as the Hitchcock/slasher reference you are right. "Toward what unknown, unseen horror is that young rodder rushing? We see where he's been, but the edge of the screen is either a wall or a cliff."

So far he's been nowhere. Therefore, I like your idea of a jalopy going into the Youngrodders garage and coming out a hot rod.

I sure hope he has four wheel brakes so he can stop before he hits that wall or goes over that cliff.

[grouch]

Originally Posted by home brew

Grouch - because you saw the logo after it was changed you do not understand what I said. Originally the logo was flipped so the driver was on the other side of the car making it right hand drive.

I'm sleepy and my head is overstuffed with control arms and steering geometry puzzles, but I'm not -that- far gone. Yet. Take a look at each of the banner images I attached in various messages. Each one of that type includes both a right-hand and left-hand drive car.

The reason I flipped the original image and put one at each end of the text (other than the fact that I'm lousy at originating the artwork) was because of that design tension thing. The original would need to be either floated to the right side of the page, making the youngrodder driving into the known (toward the center of the page) and leaving the unknown, or the image needed to be flipped. If flipped, so that it can stay on the left side of the page without the mystery, it then appears to exclude left-hand drive vehicles, so it needed both.

I'm not talented enough to redraw the car as a left-hand drive car pointed at the center, coming from the left side of the page, so I let the software do the mirror and rationalized it with the thinking that it was more international in its invitation that way.

Originally Posted by home brew

As far as the Hitchcock/slasher reference you are right. "Toward what unknown, unseen horror is that young rodder rushing? We see where he's been, but the edge of the screen is either a wall or a cliff."

I looked at it for a long time before it finally dawned on me what was nagging about it. Then it was like seeing 1 rusty lug nut amongst chrome ones.

Originally Posted by home brew

So far he's been nowhere. Therefore, I like your idea of a jalopy going into the Youngrodders garage and coming out a hot rod.

I can do a rough pencil sketch, but I can't produce something on a par with klassik's or malc's work.

Another way to use the car as-is might be to have the 'Y' as lower-case, italicized (freehand) with its first stroke (the upper left) being the inside edge of a sharp curve of asphalt, with the car about to turn and head across the page, left to right. That emphasizes the driving and leaves out the construction, though.

Remember: people around you will think you're nuts if you roll around on the floor in front of your computer. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between convulsions and laughter. Note in the attached image that the more detail that's included, the larger the image has to be on the page or all of that is lost.

[rebelbill1972]

Originally Posted by Jon

...getting closer

Here's a design with more contrast: Youngrodders.com, and, this time, I picked the color codes directly out of the logo, so everything matches a little better. For example, the main background color is the color from the lighter side of the grille in the logo. The header background is the color of the kid's arm, etc.

Still not sure how to integrate the "Youngrodders.com" text, so I've removed it for now.

rebelbill -- maybe the building could be a shop or garage of some sort?

I was thinking more like an old fashioned drive in. When I think about hot rods sometimes I can't help but imagine what it might have been like to have been a teenager when my parents were. When I daydream about it I get this perfect picture of a 50's drive in with T-Buckets and Wolfman Jack cranked up on every AM radio in the joint...Damn I was born way too late...

Not to mention the trends of todays youth, as I think has always sort of been the norm, is to try to recreate the past in some of the newer styles.

Bill