New Venue Site - What do you think?

[RonCarr]

I know you guys love these so I thought I would see what you thought about my latest website. It is for a new local venue in town. I am doing this for them for free, my way of volunteering for them. It is a cozy, artsy kind of place so that is what I am trying to accomplish with the color scheme. Let me know how you guys feel about it.

http://users.csc.tntech.edu/~rdcarr21/fc/index.html

[SrWebDeveloper]

I looked, and before I suggest ideas - let me show you a template I found which uses the same basic palette and I feel better represents a "cozy" and "artsy" feel while still coming across as a community site:

http://osc.template-help.com/wt_26417/index.html

(Allow the template to load, it's a fully functional preview, not just a screenshot, and if you like the template can be purchased for about $64.00 here (http://www.templatehelp.com/preset/pr_preview.php?i=26417&pr_code=7XKoRlSA115x9PRBOcg7pt1b88w3P0), or just use it for ideas and inspiration if you have $0 budget)

Some of the elements you might consider adding to yours:


A nice pic of the venue or people who own or use it in a masthead w/ logo
Warm brown background - a much more "cozy" feel than sand color
Introduce other warm complimentary colors (yellow, orange, more beiges)
Introduce a single contrasting color (green) - it works well in distinguishing important content and is a common design device
More context boxes with header text and content in addition to the menu
Use the palette colors to distinguish one content box from anotherI see your layout as the first step progressing towards a more fully realized site as exemplified by the template I chose at random. The styling is more oriented towards "artsy" by being fancier overall, "warm" by keeping your core colors but introducing more contrast and even half tones of your core colors and still make it work, and finally an overall "local" feel by using pics or photos not only in the masthead area but even in content boxes. You could add a community calendar on the page, some blog excerpts, and so on and so on. Note the template has Flash, I am *not* suggesting that - focus more on the layout and palette choice.

The key point I am making here is all these things I suggest were based exactly on your description of how you'd like the site to come across, and its intended audience. To each their own as to what that constitutes, I know that, but this is my .02. Hope you're inspired even if you don't like this exact look/feel.

-jim

[RonCarr]

Great advice. I am definitely not a web designer, just more of a developer i guess. Your comments made me think of things that I hadn't really thought of before. Funny you should mention the color green, as I had that in the color palette and decided to trash it.

The site is in a very very early development stage as far as layout and colors go. You have helped out a lot as always.

[SrWebDeveloper]

Trust your instincts!

Cheers. :)

[RonCarr]

I made a few design changes to the site including the color palette.

[RonCarr]

Made some huge changes to the site. Some updated feedback would be great.

[irmongoose]

My eyes hurt. Tone down the background. Way down. 15% opacity is the usual threshold for background images if you have text on them.



irmongoose

[liydjw3]

'My eyes hurt. Tone down the background. Way down. 15% opacity is the usual threshold for background images if you have text on them.'

Agreed. The background is way to in your face. I was focusing on that more than the content itself.

[Consultant]

The stripes made me dizzy. Maybe much lighter background is needed unless you want to drive away users.

[RonCarr]

Okay I get the whole background needs to be toned down situation. Any input on other aspects of the site?

[ezekielrage_99]

I'm glad to see people are using whitespace eliminator ;)