I'm looking for feedback on a new site we're launching in connection with Hotrodders.com: Youngrodders.com -- similar site, but aimed towards the younger crowd.
Thanks to klassik100 (who also designed the contest-winning Hotrodders.com t-shirts), we already have an excellent logo. Now, I've been working on the colors. We're aiming for a "sepia" look. I don't like fancy or gimmicky design. I want it to look decent though, which is reasonably challenging, as colors are not my strong suit.
I'm primarily looking for honest feedback and direct, constructive criticism on:
1. The logo at the top-left -- should we cut out the car part of the logo, and have it just sit on the brown background, without the black square backdrop?
2. The colors -- is that close to a "sepia" look? Does it look too "cream"-colored? What colors would you change or adjust? Is there one that stands out too much, or clashes with the others?
3. The "Youngrodders.com" text at the top -- is the font and overall look proper?
Everything looks good to me accept the background. When I clicked the link and it took me their my first thought was lame. I really like the black background on Hotrodders. It just has a cool feel to it.
I like the colors. I'd like to see the logo w/o the black square to see how it looks. Is the Y in the youngrodders.com text supposed to be spaced so far from the rest of the word? It seems like the oung are a bit cramped.(I'm old so I don't know if supposed to look that way)
Black and whiet are so much better, the sepia look looks like an old aged site in need of an update. Cant wait for it to be finished, looking good with the logo.
Don't care for the font used for the Youngrodders title. It looks too graffiti-ish, punkish... I think the colors that were up originally looked better.
1. The logo at the top-left -- should we cut out the car part of the logo, and have it just sit on the brown background, without the black square backdrop?
The black square backdrop causes the stylized 'YOUNGRODDERS.COM' text to be broken up where the lettering is thin. It also merges with the body of the car. IMO, a gradient of the same sepia color as on the windshield of the car used as a background would clear up both problems as well as tie it to the theme.
I'm tinkering with it in Gimp, but of course can't post the results without permission. (Asking for a critique is not the same as saying show me ) I've applied a conical gradient with the darkest running as a diagonal from lower right to upper left corner, and lightening as it approaches each of the other two corners.
Jon said:
2. The colors -- is that close to a "sepia" look? Does it look too "cream"-colored? What colors would you change or adjust? Is there one that stands out too much, or clashes with the others?
The background seems a little off somehow, but I can't figure out what. The dark brown background with bright white letters seem to fight in the header blocks. The edges of the white text seem to vibrate. The ones below those bright white major headings seem fine.
Jon said:
3. The "Youngrodders.com" text at the top -- is the font and overall look proper?
I think that the youngrodders type should be enclose in some sort of banner and not floating there...my 2cents worth. I have been a printer for 27 years but hey just my opinion. When my customers ask me what I think of their design, I tell them whatever they like is the most beautiful design I have ever seen.
The black square behind the car has to go. The car merges into it and their is no definition to the back of the car. I like the second image by grouch. Do you need to have two Youngrodders.com at the top of the page and in different fonts? Either font is OK with me.
IMO...There is not enough contrast between the borders and the back ground. The black square behind the logo blends in with the car too much. And finally, the yellow/tan? colors are kind of boring, I know it's the text we put on them that is supposed to keep our attention but it might get a little hard to look at after a while...
Thanks guys -- this is exactly the kind of input I was hoping for.
--I put grouch's image of the car without the background up there -- it looks much better without the black box, even without the gradient removed: http://youngrodders.com . Is it possible to get just the car, on a transparent background, without it looking choppy? The only way I know how to do it is to cut it out by hand with a "lasso" tool in a graphics editing program, and then clean it up with an edge blur.
--I prefer black/grey too, but I think we're going for a sepia look here.
--Regarding the spacing of the "Y" in Youngrodders, I agree, that should be altered, that won't be too hard. It's just a simple text graphic I made on CoolText.com.
--Enclosing the Youngrodders.com text in some sort of banner or box is an option, I'd be interested to see what others have to say about that.
Looking at the site again, it may look better with a border of some kind around youngrodders.com. There is a lot of empty space up there. Or even an alternative to the border would possibly be another graphic of some sort at the other side, or just a pattern of some kind at the end of the text. Like a checkered flag or something along those lines, just to fill up some of the space.
If the storms don't knock me offline, I'll attach some more images.
The two with 'car-only' in the name will probably show up with a white background. I will upload the whole Gimp file and also export it to a Photoshop file format (don't know whether all 14 layers will show up or not, as I don't and won't have Photoshop). I'll edit this after the sloooow upload to post the url.
Great, thanks grouch -- now we're getting somewhere. I put the banner up: http://youngrodders.com just to see how it looks. The car sits very well on that background color, but the logo text looks like it needs some sort of work to fit properly.
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?
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?
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.
[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.
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.
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?
Ah, good call, I hadn't noticed at all. Fixed: Youngrodders.com.
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