Criticism and Opinions Welcome

[Barrettathome]

New design for the a development in Va, Beach.

[Barrettathome]

Up and running... AsiaTown, New Mixed-Use Development in Hampton Roads - Coming Summer 2012 to Virginia Beach in the Heart of Princess Anne

[woosaj]

This is not good design you should work more one colors, typography etc... It looks very unprofessional just my toughts.

[Barrettathome]

Do you have an example of what you would call a good design?

[woosaj]

Yes, checkout some themes on ThemeForest and you will see what is quality and professional work.

[Barrettathome]

Yea they do have some good ones up there but we do all custom work for our clients. Plus alot of our clients have custom applications that we build and they need to be skinned. I think you just have a problem with blue... lol Besides if I picked the colors it would be different, but a lot of the sites that I do, the client provides the logo that already has there company colors and that's what I have to go off of. Do you happen to be a designer or just a critic?

[Laurynnem]

I was actually thinking it looks nice - fresh for a change. I was starting to notice way to many site designs and layouts looking like clones (from Themeforest ect).
This one is refreshing. I don't mind the colors but it shouldn't matter to me anyway - as I'm not their target market. I believe those would be professional business people and most of the time they prefer subtle colors - like this site has.Barrettathome... I like it, its not just another $39 clone you bought from a site everyone else has. ;-)

[Barrettathome]

Thanks, Yea I try to shy away form those "clone" layouts and make each design unique to the client and there target market. Thanks for the Input.

[Mlio]

The header and the menu is looking good. Also the submenu is well done. The main thing with the design I would change is the background images in the boxes and main text area. It makes the design very busy looking and text harder to read. Also it is hard to establish on a first hand where to look at first, as every part in the design draws attention. Maybe it would be good to design according to the AIDA principle. Combined with the Ogilvy ad principle it would be way easier to quickly look through the website.

The shop icon looks very thin and not iconic enough. Look via google images to other shop icons and see which type works out better.

Overall I see in all your designs the footer is an exact copy of your menu. Why is that? I don't think it is an added value as the page height is not too heigh. Might take a look at smashingmagazine for an example of good footer design.

[Barrettathome]

Yea I see what your saying. As of right now I have a standard format that I have to go by for the copyright line as well as having a bottom navigation. Some times after we add content for a certain page it really stretches the page out. Its more for the users convenience rather than the design element. The images that I had to work with were also limited, I prob should have turned the opacity down on the content boxes background. Overall I'm happy with it and the client loves it. It will be in use for about another year then we will prob do an overhaul on it for the new shopping center. Thanks for the input, looking forward to hearing some more advice.