Design Debate -- Opinions Requested

Which is better (see image links)?

  • Design 1

    Votes: 15 78.9%

  • Design 2

    Votes: 4 21.1%
  • Total voters
    19
W

wireplaycc

n00b
Joined
Oct 23, 2004
Messages
36
My friend is working on a personal website and has come up with two versions -- "site 1" and "site 2". I assisted on design 1 and he came up with design 2. He thinks design number two is the better version. I'm thinking not.

We need the opinions of a 3rd party to settle this matter, but first I offer ours:

Mine:

First of all, the header is much better on my version. The eye has no lid, which is cool, and the font rocks -- Although the queer ".com" part should go. The brownish grey background gives the site a good feel and the ragged way it interacts with the black backgorund is "hawt".
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His:

Alright first everyone needs to know I'm a graphic design artist not a code monkey like my "friend" here. Second this site is intended to be a reflection of my work, my thoughts and peoples thoughts over my work. Not a hefty fully functional work of web garbage that is all to often posted on the net now a days. So in knowing this you have to judge on the art not function. I feel that the overall dark layout is better represented in the black layout with the grey overlay as to better emphasize the title areas of grey. Along with the overall art being a much greater quality instead of the garbage I threw together in 4 hours to get noticed.
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And finally, the sites:

Design 1
Design 2
 
IMO design 2 is better, EXCEPT for the title. The embossed look is absolutely horrible. It needs to be changed. Otherwise, they're both good, just i prefer 2.
 
not a big fan of either, but i'll go with the 2nd one despite the gay embossed font that above guy mentioned. Neither of them seem to fit on my screen without resizing
 
Tough to say. Design #2 doesn't have a navigational point nor any information structure. So until I see that, I can't offer much.

Plus I don't agree with your friend. I think the most important thing on a designer's portfolio is his/her work, more than the actual design of the portfolio.
 
1) Contrast is miserable. I'd close out that page before I even saw the nav links or read the front text.

2) It's a background, not a design. As a background, it's much too large for web work. It's far too wide, and the image height is a waste of bandwidth.
 
MarvynDT said:
I think the most important thing on a designer's portfolio is his/her work, more than the actual design of the portfolio.
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Agreed. I don't like either design much. If your goal is to get me to hire you, keep your work the focus of what I see.
 
i like the "ragged" look and the font of #1, but i actually prefer the "eye" in #2. Also, I assume #2 will have a similar nav section to #1?

both need a brighter content font color though, it's very difficult to read.
 
I like the eye in #1, but I like the background of #2. #1 is nicer because of the defined space for content, but that can't really be judged since #2 has no defined web pieces at all, other than some images.
 
Before you can really judge the web design aspects of the site you really need to tag on some of the content of the site (nav buttons and the like). These will really effect the way you want to do the graphics since the point of the graphics is to enhance the users experience with the site. If you figure out what buttons to put on etc AFTER the graphics are all done then sometimes they don't fit right. Make a mock up of the site with buttons etc. Then decide which looks better.

Since the graphics (aside from the eye) are really pretty subtle (I like) you might want to try and find a way to tile them to cut down on bandwidth.

New font for the grey stuff....

It's starting out good. Just make a mock up. I think you will see that when everything is added in the subtle differences in the eyes won't stand out as much
 
Design 2: Seems nice. There's no sample content, though. I don't much give a darn about the embossed header; I don't think it's that bad, and it doesn't matter if I do. It's the content that counts.

Design 1: The content text is too dark. I can barely read it. I'm not going to spend much time on a site that I can't comfortably read.
 
Oh, the text in the background IS supposed to be content. I just took it as background because it was SO dark. Might want to pump it up a bit so people with in bright offices can read it :)
 
a major focus of design/typography and information communication is legibility. they both fail.

that being said, i prefer #1
 
Originally, I put


... #1.

Then I realized that there was text on the two of them. Now, if I could, I'd change my vote to neither. Unless I turn the brightness on my monitor up about 200%, they're both completely illegible aside from the poorly rendered title on #2.

I would close out either one before reading a single sentence.



What's the matter, having trouble reading my text??
 
They need to be brighter, at least the contrast between text and background.. otherwise, i do like number 1
 
I haven't read the comments so far, but I think #1 is the clear winner if you find some way to increase the contrast in the main text area. The low contrast in the main menu links is slightly forgivable, but I just can't picture trying to read any significant amount of text with that "black on dark gray" theme.
 
#1 is the only one of the two that even allows the user to see any form of text. however, most users (including myself) would probably close the page after 10-15 seconds of struggling to read the actual content due to the contrast of character font colors compared against a similar color background. #2 doesn't give any content, so the verdict on that is unknown.

#1 is the "doom 3" of webpage designs: neat design, good use of occaisional color, but still way too dark to see the entire image.
 
#1 is the "doom 3" of webpage designs: neat design, good use of occaisional color, but still way too dark to see the entire image.
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Hahahaha -- I got a kick out of that one! :p

Thanks for all the comments! I totally understand that the contrast sucks but that's what my friend wanted. I was only the facilitator of the css layout as he is not a "code monkey" as he put it in the first post. My sites tend to be white with dark text -- the sterile look.

Both designs are junky -- we know this :) He just thought his was less junky. Personally I think the emossed header text on #2 should earn him a swift kick in the nuts and perhaps a broken finger. :D

I'm not pleased with either design and my friend and I will go back and modify our versions (as I only did the css for #1) and see which "round 2" is better. I'll update this post in the next day or so with updates.

Keep the comments coming. This isn't completely serious as it was just meant to settle a little disagreement that my friend and I had -- so feel free to let the comments rip.
 
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