Design & Publishing . / . WEB . / . Critique . / . Where to Next?

Here's an outstanding source of Photoshop tips (almost as good as the Design Center) but a designer would ask some questions about reader flow, and content prioritizing.

We found this site to actually be very nice, and better than most you'll see. We particularly liked the logo graphic, and the overall crispness of the initial visual gulp. A few tweaks however would make for a more powerful page.

It's tempting to put navigational devices at the top, but why invite a reader in and then send them elsewhere?

The two heavy visuals are competing for the reader's eye. If they leave now, will they be back? Those holes in the page are not only distracting, but will actually pull the reader's eye in the wrong direction -- away, around the content and out of the page. Let's put these visuals to work...

1. Nav bar to the bottom - don't distract
2. Kill the html title, make it work with that wonderful logo, in both color and typestyle, leading the eye.
3. Move the white space to the outside of the content well so it helps frame and isolate the important stuff.

4. Make everything line up, and relate to something else. Now, our readers' eyes are pulled by the logo, into the title where gravity tumbles them into the content well -- there's a simple, strong path -- held away from the edges of the window.
5. Finally, the nav bar forms a comfortable anchor and finale for the whole visual gulp. Perhaps our 'Visual Proofreading” piece should be applied to this web site! When white space is chaotic, it fragments the page. Moving it to the outside of the page helps isolate the reader into the content well.

In retrospect to this review... conducted last fall, we believe now that the nav device could just as easily been placed, stacked, under the main logo. That would have worked too.

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