for the contest One-page Corporate Design: Top 3 winners paid
Submitted design #2
Hi JPriebe,
Here's my entry for your contest. I'll send the details of my design decisions via private message.
Best regards,
Simon.
Wow. I like this. It's textured and has lots of little bits. This is probably as textured / not-minimalist as I'd like to go, but it's not too far. Overall a great start.
I like both the blue (top) and the green/grey (bottom). I'm torn. If you only work off one, I'd use the top blue one, but maybe add in a bit of grey, less blue. I like the bottom one a lot, but the top one is better aligned to our brand colors: it really comes off as branded ours. I also really like the use of the green accent.
A few questions / notes:
- The background. Is there something that can be more plain / light? The dark color offsets the content, so that may be good to keep. I'm not sure of what to do here - but something without the layering effect.
- I don't like having 2 logos: the bottom one (below (c) 2008) is not needed
- The search bar doesn't quite fit. The shaded text box and the magnifying glass image. I like having an image + text, but I think the image could be better (maybe it's just small and it looks funny, I'm not sure).
- The header area: We'd prefer a single image across it instead of 2.
- The right-hand side "person" is a bit hard to tell as a person in the "green" (top) design: since they are only partially filled.
- The right-hand side links with the checkmark: I like the use of green & an image to highlight these links, but an arrow or something other than a checkmark.
- I don't love the bullets, any other ideas?
Stuff that is particularly good:
- The "highlight" for the currently viewed menu item is good: the green line on top & bottom.
- Overall the menu levels are quite good.
- The side (right-hand) boxes with the highlights. In particular the use of the accent green makes them pop out.
- Also for these: the bright white headline & less-white text is good.
- The "lock" icon on the login area. Even better is the grey version where it is in its own color block.
I got another piece of feedback today:
The menu & breadcrumbs: the menu text is more white than the breadcrumbs and is easier to read / it catches your eye.
Can you switch the colors or somehow emphasize the menu more than the breadcrumbs?
Submitted design #17
Here's my new entry, revised with your comments in mind.
I decided to take the best of both color schemes. Mainly it's the blue design, but with a more muted, greyish blue. This also allowed me to take the navigation design from the green design. Together with the new photo's colored arrows, I think we've hit an excellent overall color balance.
The top and bottom background is now a bit lighter, although I would recommend keeping it high contrast to offset the content, as you said. The layering effect is something I would keep as well. I tried several other options; with the grey bars not jumping in, without a slight shadow, removing them all together, ... but I keep coming back to how it looked at the start. I feel it really gives a more unique look to the design.
Other touch-ups have been made per your comments, but don't require extra explanation. Oh, except maybe for the new bullets. As you can see I used the "e" from the logo. I think it looks pretty good, but I'm not sure if you're ok with me cutting up the logo, so to speak.
As always, I'm open to further suggestions.
Simon.
Definitely implemented the requests.
In particular, the tidying/fixing of the "person" (right-hand side "In-Person walk-through") is spot-on. The arrows are good too (bottom highligh/link of each right-hand side box), I was seeing more straight-line, angles (e.g. ">") but the hand-drawn keeps that whole area with boxes hand-drawn. Nice surprise.
The top header has especially strong impact now.
I'm going to keep thinking about the colors. Thanks for making this "combined" version, I'll see how it plays around the office, color scheme is less of an issue, since we have a spectrum that we're working within now and we have some visual options.
The search bar is definitely fixed up, nice.
I don't like the "e" from the logo as bullets. I know some people are "ok" with that sort of thing and some aren't. We aren't. That's pretty minor since bullet image is a small issue. About as far as I'd go with cutting up the logo is to use the "e" with the top cap (the line) by themselves (maybe a favicon, not as a bullet or other piece - something standalone is OK). Like I said, that's minor.
I had one other question that I forgot to ask: when a visitor rolls-over the menu on About Us (or anything on the righ-end), where does the menu pop to? Does it still pop right over the area below? Or does it shift and pop left?
Yes, I'd have it pop left. The second tier can line up its right border with the right border of the About Us button. The same goes for the third tier. It can pop to the left of the second tier if there's no room on the right. Normally if you're using a standard javascript implementation for the menu, this is what will happen by default.
Simon.
Submitted design #70
I've reverted the menu back to its original colors, but I did add a grey highlight to the active item of the first tier. After some tests it seems green is the way to go for the subtle bars above and below the navigation. It made sense, seeing as I've used green for other "actionable" items as well.
Other than that, I've gone ahead and picked a bullet for the list. This is just a detail though of course, and can easily be changed.
Simon.