Layout

[Ryan]

http://66.29.3.61/~freshcod/break/

Preview of new layout for my arcade site. Comments would be sweet.
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[krt]

Well, it's hard to judge it before the content is added. Designing for and sometimes around content and advertising will be the main challenge. From what I can see, the logo looks nice as well as the clean layout, however the black stripe in the background and the menu have a bit too much contrast. I'd also suggest to tone down the web 2.0 feel, it doesn't mix very well with a humour and games site!

[ClickFanatic]

I am not sure if this design is good for a game site. There is no content to see how it will look.

The layout has a very strong contrast, which isn't really a problem. However, the current text doesn't contrast at all. Light grey on a white background and a faint blue on a light blue background.
A rule of thumb is to always go for good contrast with typography, unless there is a good reason to do otherwise.

I can see the shadow on the sides is done using two floating divs. I wouldn't do this myself, but finding an alternative is like solving a nasty Sudoku (a challenge, to some).
One side effect that comes to light is that the extra divs cause the layout to become wider, creating a horizontal scrollbar when viewed at 1024x768.
The divs also do not extend to the bottom of the page.
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[Ayana]

The layout looks good, but its hard to tell without any real content there
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[coralvalley]

You know at first glance I look at this and I would say to me it looks very decent. The colors match nicely and it looks somewhat professional. I like the tag for the site and I think that looks very clean and then the lower stuff to come at the bottom looks nice to me.

With the content in I would be eager to see this because the site looks nice and could honestly turn out to be a really nicely set up site. It looks amazing thus far so keep up the great work. The layout looks great and I like the colors used in this.

[Perpetual]

I like the general layout, you need to mess with colors though.

Too much white, it blends most of the page together.
Pick a few colors and make the site out of them...a few being 3-4.

The background needs to be a higher contrast from the rest of site or it needs to be same color as rest of site. the light gray doesn't look right being next to another shade of light gray. Same with 2 shades of red. If you use a color, don't use another close shade of it. I try to not use a color and a different shade of same color at all.

You have nice vibrant colors at top of site but nowhere else.

The game categories...Are they going to have text under them (like titles to games) or are they just buttons? With titles under them, would fill up bottom of page better.

Nice logo, its small, gives an idea of what the site is, easily printable on business cards and other mediums. Design the site to match your logo.

I also like that you kept the fonts simple. Sometimes people will use weird and many different fonts. I would darken some of your font colors, not everyone has good eyesight. You want your fonts for links to stick out...its what you want them to click on.

Move non essential links like "contact" to bottom of page. Keep navigation simple and uncluttered. Removing a link or two will allow you to make a larger font for main menus. I would also narrow down the size of the black bar at bottom of page unless you have enough stuff to fill in the space.

Your on the right track for a site design, it will be perfect with a few tweaks.
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[Scar]

I was waiting for something else to load such as graphics.

It's nice and all, but there is just too much white. Such as uptop where the logo is. That space needs to be smaller or something else put into it. just looks too blank.

Other than that it looks really nice. Good job.
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[martin]

Nice work! It looks like very "web 2.0", modern, clean. Keep working and do it standards compliant.
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[drath]

It obviously has web 2.0 elements in there, which gives it a modernistic look, in terms of the web. These elements are the top background gradients in the header, and some of the "gloss"/gradient buttons.

I think everything is working decently here except the colors. The colors used makes it look very American... which would be alright if it had anything to do with America or Americans. I think the color scheme could be tweaked very easily to steer away from this problem. For instance, the blue used in "Featured Games" appears no where else, and only weakens the color scheme because it seems arbitrary. If you change the blue in "Featured Games" to something like in the bottom buttons this would most likely solve everything. I don't have a real issue with the contrast or anything like that which other people have been saying though. I think it's a case of just too many colors, and the conotation of America.

I agree with the comments about the logo. There's a couple things I would change with the letter spacing to stop from getting those tiny thin white areas between some of the letters, but that's about it. Maybe also align the bottom corner of the B in "BREAK" with the bottom of the rest of the text in "Boredom".
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[Voldemort]

Looks nice and clean.. Things I don't like are: The red part in the featured games box, maybe a red-black gradient would look nicer, and the black part in the copyright notice box. Plus I think the header could be improved a little.
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[ClickFanatic]

It doesn't really seem like he's responding to the feedback, does it?
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