Thoughts about a website design?

hey guys,

I've got a college task to write a whole website in PHP. Where you can post messages that will be showed on the hompage and adverts.

The site currently looks like this:
(note the advert image is just a hard coded example and I know its not centered)


It has to be in the same 'style' as the main site, ie the same colours, new design etc
http://thomasmore.be/

At the moment I'm totally not happy with the looks, what do you guys think?
Got any ideas to make it more beautiful for example?
Do share please!

 

First of all, I might suggest getting rid of the clock. The placement of it is just inappropriate for the layout. Second, you're using shadows to frame the center piece - I personally wouldn't do that. Use a line of some sort if you want to frame.

Third, the left sidebar doesn't seem to mesh with the rest of the page. You added a random orange block in the top right corner which probably shouldn't be there. If you need to define a logo it needs to be done smoothly within the page. Oh, and also. You're mixing "rounded" areas with "square" areas. It doesn't exactly work on websites if you're looking for a professional look. *.*

Not sure if any of that helps you at all but yeah... Apologies for being harsh.

 

Its not harsh man, it gives me reasons to think about! So thanks for the feedback as a first

The thing is, the clock is something I wanted to keep because the website will be projected on big screens. So I wanted to have a clock on it, because everybody likes to see a clock in public when you sit there. (atleast I do)
The problem with the logo is that we MUST use the logo and if I place the logo just on the blue, the blue 'o' from thomas mOre goes invisible, because its the same colour.. :/

The shades and round / square is something that I could revise and change probably
I'd like feedback from a few more guys. Oh and guys, you're always welcome to draw it out or something, I love to see different ideas.

Help is much appreciated

 

It looks like your going for a simplicity level of somthing like the Windows 8 Design. I like it, but the drop shadows seem a bit heavy/unneeded. Good job

 

Wow, pretty cool you actually saw it as in the windows 8 style.
That was indeed a bit the idea. To keep it simple and userfriendly, especially for the buttons!
Thanks man.

 

Bump, anymore ideas, thoughts or something?

 

Try shifting your logo to the left (over your pages) and your clock smaller and over to the right. Just continue to modify and tweak your sidebar, header, and footer until you feel comfortable. Personally I think that you should keep it simple. Adding a header, footer, AND sidebar is just too much going on for that site. Make the footer a simple white that is separated with a soft-grey line.

Keep the original website in mind: Look at how simple the lines are on it (that's what makes it extravagant).

If you're looking for inspiration literally just go surf the web for random sites. You could try randomwebsite and just spam it a decent amount of times.

 

Going full out here but how about using this? took me 20 minutes to design this:

 

Wow dude, thats some pretty nice stuff
How would that look like in my size? As in a real webpage? Would you like to design something raw about that?

This looks 100x better than mine and if I could see it in the whole webpage view I'll most likely use a few things from your design. Since on the 'small' image it already looks A LOT better!

Thank you for taking the time to do this

 

Really it should be the same, boxes become like 500x500 each you can add more than 4 nav bars for sure you'll need to add the microsoft font to get that navbar font, used helveticaNue for clock & dummy text (blurred).

Footer crosses out through whole page, I'll provide you with the divider or you can just make it using an rect image and shadings

 

I just can't really place the view in full perspective, like how it would look on my size.. And I have a feeling I'd love it..
Honestly, I'm a coder and I'm pretty bad at the design parts, so I'd love to see it in 'my' size. Cause I have a feeling that I'd really implement that design of yours.

Can I persuade you to make it in a bigger size, just like my frontpage so I have a good idea?

 

as you wish

 

Thanks for that time dude, that looks pretty nice!
Yep I'm totally gonna look into this!
(which font did you use?)

And thank you very much for making that

 

NAVBAR1-2-3-4 used

"Microsoft YI"

as for the clock I used Skypes "helveticanue"


The background is off-white

 

Thank you very much man! very kind of you

 

Your welcome, show me it when its done