Struggling for ideas

[ChrisHPZ]

Hi everyone, how we doing. I have this template I've been messing with. It needs more and I can do so much better than this anyway. However I'm struggling with what every web designer does every now and then, IDEAS!!! How about it PSG community, any suggestions? I don't care if its graphics, animation, video or CSS styling ideas. I'm just at a loss right now.

http://www.cdemarco.com/photographyTemplate.html

[Vetoed]

Im not a fan of the banner tbh. Id go with a smaller height for the banner. Also Im not a fan of the style of buttons. Id rather a curved rectangle button with a small stoke. Inside the button id make a gradient that curves to make the top part of the button lighter than the bottom to give it a better look

[Hoogle]

I would work on the frames they need to be more obvious that they are frames I had to look twice before I realised initially I thought they were badly cropped images with uneven white borders.

I am assuming the header and camera part at the top left can be replaced by any graphic if it is a template so dont need to comment on that.

I do like the idea of the 2 part header

What is the story behind the gallery is that going to be animated flash or something or will that be a set format for whoever uses the template if so the bottom half of the image skews to the left but yet the images are being looked at from straight on.

The buttons and colours could do with being more modern and background less over powering.

[ChrisHPZ]

Honestly Hoogle, there is no story with the gallery images on the right. It can be animated but it really doesn't matter at this point because it's just an example. In all actuality, this template can be used for any kind of website. I just chose photography because it's one of my hobbies and I have plenty of pictures on my computer to populate the template with stuff.

Can you elaborate on what a modern button looks like today? There's so many websites on the internet, I guess I don't know what to relate your statement to. I thought the rounded rectangles with animated mouse over was modern, LOL!! That cyan to black gradient background is a bit much isn't it. Yeah you're right Hoogle, it looks like something I would associate with a marina or maybe scuba gear company not photography. Doesn't look like that on Internet Exploder, just the up-to-date-with-CSS browsers like firefox, safari, opera, chrome.

There is however a story with this and the other 2 templates on my portfolio site. Most of the content screams that I can do animation, video, work with Flash and Actionscript, etc. But there's nothing on it that will tell employers I can make websites. I am looking to enter the web design field professionally and my portfolio is my only asset since I don't have any professional experience as of yet.

http://www.cdemarco.com/webdesign.html

[Hoogle]

It is the grey colour and almost violet I think you have to many clashing colours

Have you ever tried Kuler
http://kuler.adobe.com/#themes/rating?time=30

A free site that lets you choose a colour and it will automatically match colours that look good with the initial colour.

There are also millions of colour schemes on there and lets you sample the colours using the eye dropper tool from photoshop and I believe you can actualy save colour swatches to import themes into photoshop.

[Hoogle]

oh by the way click the create link in that above link and then choose complimentarty or whatever feature you like

[ChrisHPZ]

Yeah I use Kuler with Illustrator, but never thought of it to use with Ps. It figures that I didn't look at the overall color scheme. I get so wrapped up in the small details of each element that I forget to look at the bigger picture so to speak. One thing that's been on my mind lately is a footer that has skewed sides. I think I could code one out that matches the way the thumb gallery seems to be skewed. Get a black to white gradient background in it to give the illusion of 3D. WTH, gonna do this and see what happens.

http://www.w3schools.com/css3/css3_2dtransforms.asp

[ChrisHPZ]

Yeah this is nice as it gives me hex codes to work with

[ChrisHPZ]

Come to think of it, this might very well look better without all the fancy schmancy CSS code. It comes off as being quite basic on IE. But that might not be a bad thing because I would want people to be "wowed" by the content and not the overdone aesthetic appeal. Still going to do the stupid skewed 3d gradient div though. I think IE 9+ supports it too.