[Joey]

Well first off I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Joey, aka Iron Eagle. No I have never seen the movie, and yes it may have been gay and that does NOT make me gay. Okay, now that I got that out of the way. For those of you who clicked on this link *grins* you are in for one hell of a scary display of crap. I've visited these forums for the last 2 years, from everything with Dhabih's break in, to his updated drawings which include 3 month breaks. I have seen Enayla's art (wonderful btw) and Synj's art and laughed and cried over all of them. So for once in my life, I'm here to show you a little bit of something I worked on. I know this isn't really art but I tried my first every webpage.

Some background information on the webpage: I am currently developing a slew of servers for a popular game known as Half-Life Counter-Strike. My goal is to develop a non-profit organization that runs multiple servers for games coming out and so forth, as well as mods. The name is Extreme Speed Networks, and the servers are known as Extreme Speed Server 1, 2, 3 and so forth. Anywho, I am just trying to develop the webapge and I have decided on which design I am going to use... I am lacking one thing. I need a logo. Now I have tried 300 million times to make a logo and I have found 300 million ways that don't work. So I look out to you, the Sijun forums of greatness and beauty. Can you please make me a logo with the words: Extreme Speed Networks / ESN / Gaming at an Extreme Speed / So fast it's kind of ridiculous. Thankyou, you will also get credit for your work. Anywho, here is my webpage layout that I have chosen


Please Crit/Commment/suggest and PLEASE make me a logo or something . Thankyou, and sorry for the long first post. but you guys mean a lot to me and well I just wanna say hi to everyone... and thankyou for sharing your art with me.

[ June 25, 2001: Message edited by: Joey ]

[kaylon]

Layout is good..only crit would maybe be about the font, it just not seam to fit the topic."speed"...i'd use a more dynamic font I think .

Kay.

[Joey]

What kind of font? When you say dynamic, what would be a font thats dynamic.. can I download one, if so where?

[topeira]

maybe think of things that brong the assosiation of speed like blur, horizontal lines, multiply a certain shape along a horizontal line (like the image of FLASH when he seemed to multiply when he ran), wheels, wind, storms, other things that can bring up any ideas for the design of the site and logo.
sorry i can't do more than this. work calls me and i'm drain of ideas. keep the brain workin'.
goodluck with the site for all u counter-strike fans. at least untill oporation flashpoint1985 goes gold... heh heh

[Joey]

Operation Flashpoint looks so fun!!!

[Vgta]

Very cool design so far, just a few things.
All constructive criticism of course.
Firts off it's the fonts:
they are too big, use a smaller san-serif font. That way you keep with the "high-tech" look as opposed to the decorative look of the font you are using.
Margins: the text on the left is way too flushed to the left, a 5pxl to 10pxl border should do. also the contact us text is too close to the top.
Next up, think of introducing more textures. Right now the overall layout seems to work. Time to add the eye candy. Brushed metal, slight drop shadows, etc.
Think of how you are going to cut the images. By this I mean, this screen is going to have to be put in some type of html format, so you got to make sure that the design can be cut as efficiently as possible.
Well can't think of anything else right, now, looking pretty cool. Keep on posting your progress I'd love to see how it turns out.

[Sc00p-]

I'll just get right into it ::

i) The whole thing lacks contrast, everything is muted, try adding some colour, or

ii) Mind the space around your elements in a composition. You have a lot of type smacking up to lines, and the edge of your layout. Always either leave some breathing room (people love to look at whitespace) or make it really obvious that you want type hitting a line, which is usually done by making the line thicker, or making the type cut into it, make sense?

Basically, if you're going to do something that visually breaks the rules with type like this, make sure its obvious, and typographical, and not just because you don't know the right from the wrong in design.

iii) You have some type "kissing" ...on the two 'speed' words you have there, the 'd' and the 'p' are running into eachother.

iv) This website layout won't really fit together if it's not in a popup window...is that your intention? (That rectangular picture on the bottom will look pretty out of place once it's in HTML)

v) Create a logo, wordmark, or masthead, instead of a simple font (and a Windows-supplied font at that). Some of the world's great logos (sony) are mere typefaces, but they never use the same one for anything else on their design, so it's a good idea to create a logo to separate the name of your organization to everything else on the page.

vi) Definitions of a word are really overdone, and you shouldn't fall into that cliche if you can help it, I would use that space for something a bit more useful, and less promotional, especially since it is too abstract of a promotional idea, not to mention not very original (every financial company this side of the planet have something silly like this)

vii) Back to type again, I would make your menus/fonts a bit smaller. This will give you more space to put content, and will look less amateurish.

viii) I like all the shapes you have going on, just clean them up a bit, especially the 45-degree cut in the 1pt line beside "contact us"

Overall, a good first attempt, but it might go sour if you put this online. I encourage you to keep posting these sites in WIP so we can all see your progression with these layouts. My biggest advice out of all this design-theory crap is just be creative, do something different, have something that stands out, that catches the eye, that has flow, and most of all, do something you'll have fun with!

Hope this wasn't too much to take in, keep it up! :)

[Joey]

Smash my work all to hell will you . I appreciate all the comments, thankyou. Break the norm you say, well I'll do that. I'll make something thats not 'norm' but easy to work with and 'fun' And no font-sex either. Thankyou very much. What is a good way to design teh webpage, Program or HTML (notepad) I personally use Dreamweaver 4.

[Sc00p-]

Well, raw HTML knowledge will really help you understand how tables work and such, and would've let you realize that this design wouldn't work out so well in the first place, which is a good thing, so you dont waste your time working on something that won't be in your best interest to build afterwards.

You should really focus on design though, and struggle through dreamweaver for now, until you're happy with a look you like, then go learn about howto better implement it.

[y0]

actually though, if he makes this on a pop up window, itll be ok (using frames)