Ok, I've offered to make the website for the village we live in. Now, the logo is the pale blue, so I found a palette on Colorlovers that contained that color. I need some critique on what I've came up with so far.
Like it or not, let's hear it!

That's not bad at all! Yep! A very good start I think!

ooooooooo la la Mr Mark! I like it! Very nice "original" color scheme.. Green reminds me of the grassy plains where you live!

Like it a lot!

Hi Mark,

I like it. The first thing I thought when I saw the logo was, that's a paint palette, that area must have some beautiful views.

Well.. there are quite a few artists living here. Not so much painters, but more woodworkers.. there are some nice wood sculptures exposed in the community center..
I really like living here

And yes.. the views are AWESOME here.. Saskatchewan is know for the sunsets.. They say "You can watch your dog run away for 3 days"..

Anyway.. no critique for the site other than "I like it"?

Sorry I thought that I was critiquing the logo only.

Obviously I like the logo. The colour scheme is good too. I think that the pale blue and orange work well together.

I am not sure if I like the 3 column look, but who am I. I can't put my finger on what it is, but that part didn't grab me.

well.. the 3rd column is not really crucial.. Because the left column only holds 1 news item, the right column sortof works as an archive..

It's a good start and I like the colors. You have a very good starting point for a layout, but it could be so much better if you could follow a grid-based layout.

Things aren't lining up. Your content area is pushed way in on the sides (and not the same amount on both sides either), your footer doesn't stretch all the way to the right like the navigation bar does.

It also lacks uniformity. Some things have borders (navigation, content boxes) others don't (footer). My recommendation on this one woul be to do without the borders entirely, or do very very light "transitional" borders between to background and content-box colors. It will make it feel not so boxed in.

Also add some margin between those boxes, add some margin. It feels so tight.

Navigation: Lost the horizontal separators. Shrink down the font-size, and add some padding, esp horizontal between the links. Also, drop that thing down a bit. That huge gap between the nav background and the content area is an eye-sore. Try different things... Possibly even doing away with the background for the nav all together.

The footer: I would lose the box around it all-together. Push the footer info down another 20px or so, shrink it and make it just a little darker than the background color so that it's still very visible, but blends in a bit better.

Font color: Don't use black (#000) use a dark gray (#333).


Now, the logo. I don't know if this is your design or someone else's but this things is photoshop layer styling galore. Lose the emboss, lose the drop shadow... or at least make it tasteful. It's the thing on the side with those [over done] effects and just doesn't fit. Another thing that's bothering me about the logo... It's the only thing on the page that's not a square.


This website has some VERY good information. Take a look: http://design.isinthedetails.com/ Download the pdf, it's got some good information. Albeit a little difficult to follow since the guys aren't walking you through it it still makes a lot of very good and simple to use and remember points.

This is useful!
I started on the grid system right away (which is harder than it sounds )..

You have a point on the uniformity, I'll work on that too

Margins will come by use of the grid

For some reason I like big bulky menu's, but I guess I have to tone it down a little

Footer is something I just threw in there because I needed to close the bottom.. I wanted to work on that (the text isn't even centered)

Logo.. yes.. well.. I didn't design the logo, but I did add the bevel and the drop shadow. I actually wanted it in perspective, but that didn't look good.. The original logo is flat, and I wanted to add some life into it. I guess the standard photoshop styles abandoned me I'll work on that..

Thanks for your input! I'll upload an update pretty soon.

How about this:

I know it needs more work, so let me have it

[edit] oh, I just noticed I didn't completely fix the menu.. I'll do that in the next version..

I still like it.

I think I'd move the navigation down even further and put the City name in bigger letters above the nav and to the right of the painter's pallette. Unless you are familiar with their logo, it's not obvious what this site is about. It's good to understand in half a second and not really have to read closely to decode what the site is about.

Oh yeah.. that makes sense.. Thanks Linda..

How about this?

I like it.. nothing wrong with that. I was expecting something more "in your face" but this was a nice surprise.

Do you have to use that logo?

'I like the top Saint Isidore de...'. Moving down and ignoring the logo. The navigation is ok. A bit bog standard but it's OK. Continuing I can't help but feel that it is all a bit too boxy. The Gallery and Classified boxes could do with a header.

I am left with the impression that it is OK. I think it would be better if the logo could be changed.

Kinda hard.. it's the community logo for years, and it's everywhere. They have it on the school, they have it on the school's sport-team's shirts, they use it as letterheads/business cards etc.
Should I bring more curved lines into the content?

also: this is just the front page.. articles and stuff will be full width..