[thelist] ani difranco fans? comments?

[aardvark]

> From: "isaac" <isaac at members.evolt.org>
> 
> mix of square brackets and triangles-surrounded-by-circles on
> frontdoor doesn't work. mix of serif and sans-serif doesn't work
> either. the underline on the serif gif links is too close.

i like the square brackets... dunno where the circles came from... 
the gif-text is a bit of a problem, IMO, but that's what the client 
wanted for now... remember, this is a blend of client design, and 
our conversion... they have a wonderfully talented designer, but 
trying to get buy-in from everyone necessary, and having 1 week 
(not two, it was all done while i was in SXSW) kind of reduced 
(removed) our review time...

> unlinked sections look odd, but you can't help that very easily when
> they're trying to launch too early.

tell me about it... we pulled the links since no content came on 
monday...

> bottom right: 2 are linked. 2 are not. yet all look the same. i
> wondered if i should be clicking or mousing over the little boxes for
> a few seconds...

nope, the boxes are eye candy... the others should be greyed out, 
or missing, but again, we expected content...

> could've done more with the frontdoor so that the second it loads, i
> know what it's about. rather than having to read the links, etc. to
> me, nothing really jumps out and says "music!".

this is one case where that wasn't necessary... based on what info 
we have, everyone who comes to the site already knows all about 
RBR and ani difranco... they don't plan to use the site to draw new 
customers/fans, but to support existing ones... in that case, a 
'we're a record label site' seemed unnecessary...

> waiting for navigation to animate/expand so that i know where to click
> is a bit shitty. one nav item says "tours", but the alt text is "tour"
> (yeh, that's picky, but i'm sure you appreciate that ;))

yeah, that *is* picky... thanks for catching it... the animations are 
to be sped up and rebuilt as rollovers... just didn't have the time... 
as always...

> don't like the central alignment of footer nav, etc. looks very '4
> years ago'. large content text is good - suits the style, and pads
> things out when content-levels are low.

it proved to be hard to find another way to align it... with the page 
design as it is, aligning it left or right looked off-balance... as such, 
center proved to be the best option, other than rebuilding the footer 
altogether...

> content font usage is inconsistent. colour schemes are off.

yeah, still trying to figure out the use of some of the colors...

> very light on quality images. in 'stuff', it looks like you have some
> killer source graphics (the snow ones) to work with. i guess you gotta
> separate artist from label, but still - i would've been pestering them
> for permission to use those...

bunches to come... for a different section, though...

> too much variation in structure of various areas. feels like (despite
> being on the one domain the entire time), i've visited 3 or more
> separate sites. you might try arguing that it's important for the
> artist to be separate from the label, but even within the ani
> sub-site, this jarring effect occurs.

that was intentional... the client wanted clear demarcation, and 
without anything other than the buttons to connect the design, it's 
going to be jarring... we don't want jarring, but until the site fleshes 
out some more, well...

> it's not all bad. i'm just pointing out the not-wonderful bits. (you
> know that, others might not).

heh... sure...