[thelist] Site redesign help

Martin Kuplens-Ewart martin at graphicist.com
Wed Feb 28 10:09:23 CST 2001


Clearly all three of these designs are a big improvement on the
current look and feel of trisoft.net.

Most folk here seem to prefer
http://static.userland.com/weblogsCom/images/madmanweblogscom/Trisofth
ome2.gif
over the other two...the difficulty i see with it, and the reason i do
not particularly like the design, is that it really is too
geometrically locked in.

If this site were to reflect the trisoft image as defined by the
trisoft logo, something that in my opinion we should all strive to
achieve [harmony across the board], then those angles would have to be
softened and made more curvaceous.

http://static.userland.com/weblogsCom/images/madmanweblogscom/Trisofth
ome4.gif
is far more to my liking, as it has more of a freely-flowing feel to
it, which plays with,and against, the logo very nicely.

the same comment regarding sharp angles applies here, especially in
the solid black bar at the bottom of the screen with all the
Job/investor/whitepaper links - perhaps you could soften the left hand
slope and maybe put in a slim orange bar about 5 pixels tall, 5 pixels
off the bottom of that segment... just to break it up a little... to
prevent it from being such a visual black hole.

The "In the Spotlight" featurette is very well implemented here,
having it outside a colour field brings more attention to what surely
must be an important part of the site - as far as getting the message
out goes - perhaps you might consider thickening the brackets
surrounding it - perhaps 2pixels or so, just to give it more
substance.

http://static.userland.com/weblogsCom/images/madmanweblogscom/trisoft2
.jpg
is clearly a departure from the two other designs. unfortunately, as i
believe others have pointed out, it does not seem to have a cohesive
design vision. on one hand you have chunky graphics, on the other, a
sleek, light-feeling nav bar at the top of the screen.

my first impulse with this design would be to kill the fat
yellow/orange arrow in the bottom left hand corner...
...it does not seem to serve any real purpose, other than to bring the
visitors attention away from the information to the photo of a guy
using a dictating-machine-type thang.

the text colour for the three news boxes ought to be a darker blue...
perhaps the same shade used in the nav bar - they need more
substance... otherwisre they seem like afterthoughts... unimportant
non-features that can be easily skimmed over without losing out on any
important information.

what i would suggest for the highlight that is so very out of place in
this design, is to use the same grey, but to shape the shaded area as
a parallelogram, rather than a trapeze, so that it looks like this:

       ________________
       \                           \
        \ Hilited menu item \
         \________________\

that would probably fit into the general design a little better than
the current shading...
oh yeah, and keep the orange line underneath... as long as you move it
up into the shaded area... otherwise it loses all its meaning, as it
becomes hard to see/notice.

hope that helps some,

-martin



----- Original Message -----
From: "Madhu Menon" <madhum at trisoft.net>
To: "Evolt (E-mail)" <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2001 7:37 AM
Subject: [thelist] Site redesign help


> Hi folks.
>
> Our corporate site (see it at http://www.trisoft.net) is a bit dated
and
> needs a redesign badly. Our redesign aims at reflecting our new
business
> strategy of developing enterprise Internet solutions.
>
> I asked my visualisers to come up with some ideas and gave them an
outline
> of what we wanted. They've come up with some prototypes, which are
available
> at the following URLs.
>
>
http://static.userland.com/weblogsCom/images/madmanweblogscom/Trisofth
ome2.g
> if
>
http://static.userland.com/weblogsCom/images/madmanweblogscom/trisoft2
.jpg
>
http://static.userland.com/weblogsCom/images/madmanweblogscom/Trisofth
ome4.g
> if
>
> These are preliminary and so things like navigation labels, content,
etc.
> are not final.
>
> I'd appreciate it if you folks could give me some feedback about the
"look"
> of these prototypes and tell me what to change.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Madhu
>






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