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Feedback Please

RonCarr

RonCarr

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 12, 2007
205
0
Pasadena, CA
I have asked for feedback often and you guys are great about giving it so I am asking again. It is hard to judge when I look at these web pages for hours each day!

Basic Info:
-This is a website for a candidate in an upcoming county election.
-The Photo at the top right is a placeholder and is actually a slideshow.
-I will eventually have photos of the candidate and her family there whenever she gets them to me.
-As far as colors go, the red and dark green have to stay. I had to choose a few others myself so that I could have a complete palette.

The current site is something she did and is here: http://www.sartinfortrustee.com

Redesign 1: http://www.sartinfortrustee.com/test

Redesign 2: http://www.sartinfortrustee.com/test2

Thanks in advance for the input and help everyone!
 
Honestly I like the old one's design better. No offense, but that color scheme is simply awful (the green and red are ok, but the yellow and blue?) and your redesign is a lot more "in your face" than the old one. I don't think you need 6 Nav links when you could just present all the necessary information on one or two pages with perhaps a contact page (perhaps you had planned on changing this in the final revision).

edit: the shadowed text is ugly as well.
 
The original site i think has a pretty awkward layout that seems kind of stretched and pieced together. The new site I think has a more appealing layout structure, but I agree with miles01110, the colours are pretty rough on the eyes.

If you were able to implement the softer colours of the original site into the layout of the new site I think you would be on your way to an all around good website.

My two cents...


Cheers,

jo0
 
I agree with you both on the color aspect. I almost always have a hard time deciding how to put the colors into the design. I did remove the links page so that it cuts down on the amount of navigation links because that page isn't really that important.

I do not want all of the information on only one or two pages as I fell that this is a major problem with the original site. I also changed the text shadow so that it is a little less noticeable.
 
Don't particularly like either. I think they both look boxy and graphically challenged. But i like high caliber designs so that just preference.
 
reminds me of what my old product design teacher used to say...

'red and green must never be seen'

Sorry to say the colour just don't work.
 
I think that the general layout holds more potential than the original, however, as others have stated, the colour scheme needs re-thinking.
 
Maybe its worth looking at the websites of other people in office...

http://crapo.senate.gov/contact/email.cfm
http://cornyn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm
http://barrasso.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=AboutSenatorBarrasso.Biography
http://akaka.senate.gov/public/index.cfm
http://www.barackobama.com/index.php?splash=false

Here's a site listing most of the US Senators web sites: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

I think considering the US colors are basically red white a blue you should stick with those if you want your candidate to appear patriotic. And if there is a green agenda then use that but use it sparingly (I agree Red together with Green should not be seen... Unless you are advertising a Speak easy in Jamaica).

Good luck :D
 
The red and green are out of my hands. The candidate has already chosen those colors for her campaign and I cannot change that. She specifically told me to use her colors so there isn't much I can do about that.
 
Why is this client hiring you to do this, if she knows more than you about using color?
The large areas of red and green are simply horrid.
A more "business-like" design would seem appropriate.
Take a look at whitehouse.gov, and go from there. (replace the blue with your red and green color scheme)

BTW, Drupal or Joomla seem like a perfect fit for political websites.
Lots of useful modules can be easily added on, and your client can login and update the content very easily.
 
She chose the colors a few months ago for her campaign signs and wanted it to stay the same. I really do wish I could go with more traditional red, white, and blue.

I do believe I can take some aspects of whitehouse.gov and incorporate them into my design. Honestly I am not a designer and more of just a code person. That's why the design only used CSS and XHTML and not any graphics.

I will look into Drupal a bit more. I have never really taken the time to learn anything about CMS before. I don't really know anything about it actually. Seems like I should learn though!

thanks again everyone for your input. It really does help. I spoke to the client on the phone today and she seems to like the layout and even the colors. Still a work in progress though.
 
I've worked with Joomla, and came away extremely impressed with its overall simplicity and comprehensive plugin and theme architecture.
Drupal is geared more toward coding gurus. (whitehouse.gov is Drupal I think)

I think you'll want to have MAMP installed on your Mac in order to develop a CMS site, since PHP is required.
 
MAMP is a must. I have been using it for development for a while now and love it. Much better than having to upload the files every time I make a small change to my documents!
 
New design:

TOO MANY CoLoRs. <-feels like that.

White
Gray
Darker gray
Red
Green
Blue
Yellow

Too many boxes also.
 
I have taken some major steps to improving my design. Please take a look at what I have come up with and let me know what you think.

You can find the newest design here: www.sartinfortrustee.com/test2

All advice and comments are much appreciated. The design is not complete just so you know.
 
From my perspective that is a huge improvement, looks much cleaner. The lighter background was a good decision.

You might give some consideration to the positioning of the the nav bar elements. I personally feel they would look better if they were centred.
 
Thank you for your input. I have the links to the left because I am planning on putting something to the right, just haven't decided what just yet. :)
 
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