Staff

Past Staff

Review for Iroka Designs

You have an original layout with quite nice colours and patterns. What I don’t like is the length of the top banner. It’s too long and requires me to do too much scrolling. Otherwise, the navigation looks very neat and the links in it seem quite promising.

Information

Site: Iroka Designs
Type: Resource
Owner: Airi
Reviewed By: Tomoe
Date Received: 01/20/06
Date Completed: 10/4/06
Preview

Presentation

Layout Design

Your layout’s main image is too large and blurry. Looking at it makes me feel that my eyes are going bad. Basically, what I’m saying is don’t blur too much.
The colours I really like as well as well as the patterns and effects. It’s quite well done. And the borders are really neat too.
The font choice for Iroka Designs is good but the gap between the I and r is slightly too large.
The shadow on the lyrics (or decoration text) is rather strong. It might look better as it won’t stand out so much in a lighter shade.
In the word version there is a larger space between the letters i and o so it looks somewhat odd.
The white background looks a bit plain. Perhaps it would be better if you used say a light shade of blue, green or yellow. If the background is in colour, the white content area will stand out more.
The little background patterns before and after each section of the navigation is cute but the placement of them gives a crowded feeling. I suggest that each little pattern be moved a few pixels more away from the navigation because if a link or heading in the navigation is long, it almost touches or is touching the pattern.
The overall choice of text and text colours is good. I can read everything easily, links are distinguished and they change when I hover over them. The only complaint I have about the text is the change in both size and font when I hover over the navigation links. It’s better to keep with the same font and size because it keeps everything neater.
Have a little more breathing space for the text in the content area. Meaning, leave more space between the frame (I’m referring to the frames you have around each section of text). There seems to be more space between the text and frame on the right and bottom side than the left and top which is unbalanced. If you leave as much on the top and left as you have for the right and bottom, it would look much better.
You have also left more between the left border and the content than the right border with the navigation. Again, this is unbalanced and doesn’t give a particularly good impression.
While I am fond of the little footer on the navigation, I dislike the one under the content. The text isn’t all that nice looking because of the thin border and it’s large size. There is almost no space between the text and the end of the page which is quite a put off. I say either take it out completely or make it so that it is smaller, less obvious and neater.
Is it absolutely necessary for welcome to be an image? I don’t really have a problem with it but it just looks out of place. Maybe if it were just the first letter w it’d be better.

I do like your design because of the smaller details and overall clean feel but there was just a few things that you could have improved on.

Coding

Taking a look into your source, I see divs combined with tables. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that but it would be simpler to keep to just one type. I suggest divs for your layout because it’s much more flexible and easier to code. However, with what you have it is somewhat tidy enough and works so I don’t have a major issue about it.

You’re validating in HTML 4.0 Transitional yet you use the
tag as well as
. The latter is for XHTML so it’s confusing as to which mark-up you are attempting. I suggest for you to change all your
tags to
to be consistent with the rest of your coding which is obviously HTML 4.0 Transitional.

Another suggesting for your coding would be to embed more of it into your CSS. For example, you have:

<table align=”center” border=”0″ cellpadding=”0″ cellspacing=”0″ width=”651″ id=”one”>

You can change it to just:

<table id=”one”>

And place all the other variables into your style sheet into #one with the rest of your formatting. Don’t you think everything would be much simpler this way?

Other

Your favicon doesn’t match your layout at all. Perhaps you could change the colours to be closer to blue, green so that it did. Although I suppose it’s not an absolute necessity for your favicon to match your layout, it helps people remind them of your site if they have it saved in their favourites and looks better on the page.

Content

Index

The navigation is on the right I think you should take this out as the navigation is so obvious.
The underlining of contact me is misleading. I thought it would be a link to your email or a contact page and I’m sure many others would make the same mistake. I say do make it a link to your email or contact page for convenience.

About

…passion for webdesigning to provide other[s] with…
I feel very ~~greatful~~ grateful and…
Why don’t you link Courtney’s site byakuya.nu to encourage people to visit her to you’re your appreciation. Just a text mention of the URL is unlikely going to get her any hits. I know that I wouldn’t bother to copy and paste it to visit her.

Affiliates

Throughout the page Wemistress should be webmistress and wemistresses should be webmistresses. Ahh…the evil of copy & paste.
Kitzune Designs: can not should be cannot and aquire should be acquire.
Harienju: awsome should be awesome and receive should be receive.

Credits

Leave some space between Special thanks to: and Annie so everything looks more organised.
Microsoft Notepad can be credited to notepad.org

Linkage

There are more sites listed on the right than the left so it looks odd. Move some sites to the left side to make the lists as even as possible. It would look a lot more organised.

Past Layouts

Maybe you could talk more about the process of making the layouts and include some more reasons as to why you like or dislike each layout.

Terms of Usage

Please credit and link me back. Hold on a minute, your introduction on your main page says …provides free quality designs. You’re contradicting yourself. Don’t mislead people into thinking you are providing freeware when you’re providing linkware. If you have to link back to use the graphics then it’s not free, now is it?
3 and 5 are too similar. Combine them into one term because no one likes reading repeated stuff.
This counts for all graphics and designs I provide but not including PNG images. makes sense but sounds a little odd. How about This term covers everything that I provide except PNG images. or something along those lines?
Wallpapers are wallpapers which should be used for the right purpose. I would not give you permission to do that. This is badly written. You’re not giving permission for wallpapers to be used for the “right purpose”? Something like Wallpapers should only be used as desktop wallpapers. I do not give permission for any other uses. might make more sense.

Webmistress

Your instant messengers perhaps might belong to the contact page more than here (or both, if you really want it on your profile page).
The ‘more’ bit might be better off at the bottom of the page. I haven’t read anything but the basics see that you have more information writing but you’re already directing me to another site.
I’m not going to point out everything that is wrong with your paragraphs because then I’d just end up rewriting it for you. However, I will advise to read carefully over what you have written. Make sure it makes sense and that a complete stranger would understand you. Also, keep everything short and straight to the point. With that said, I suggest you revise this page.

Layout/Wallpapers: Formatting

Formatting of these graphics is not bad at all. You have relevant information and you don’t have any excess silly things such as size of the file. Everything is also neat and the background looks very pretty. Great!

Layouts

Revelation: Very nice use to textures. I quite like the main graphics of this design. However, I’m not sure that the blue background for the content area suits the main grapic. Careful, also, with the orange backgrounds in the content area because the text is not that easily read. Also, remember to give a little breathing space so everything looks neater.
Leave It Alone: I like the colouring of Ichigo towards the left. However, I think you have used too much space for the blue, purple, green textures that it looks unfinished. Perhaps darken the images within the textures a bit more.
Disgrace: The text Nothing to you looks somewhat out of place. I think it would be better if it were bigger and of a lighter shade. I’m also not sure about the navigation, it doesn’t look as though it fits with in the layout but rather randomly dumped there because there was nowhere else to put it. Otherwise, I like this.
Aracanum: A bit overdone and not as well designed as your previous layouts that I have viewed. I think you should take out all the swirls because they just don’t fit. More colour would definitely also make this design better but this isn’t the main issue here. The frame is out of place, it’s too long and not wide enough so t doesn’t look as though it fits into the shape that you have designed for it. The text is also slightly difficult to read towards the top right of the frame because of the background.
Unpredictable: Bright yellow is not a colour that eyes generally like because it’s rather blinding. I also don’t like the pixel stretch of this layout. Pixel stretches are generally annoying and make text hard to read. Although this one isn’t too bad, I still suggest a plain background.
Enticing Joy: You have nice colours on this layout. My complains for this one would be that the title ‘Enticing Joy’ doesn’t stand out enough and ‘Enticing’ especially is hard to read. The background behind the navigation could also be lightened a bit so the navigation looks cleaner. I also don’t suggest you use white for a hovering link because I’d still like to read the word that I might click on.
Shining Star: I don’t like this layout at all. The image is of a bad quality. The square pattern is overused (and especially annoying as the background of the content and navigation) and the text Be Yourself, Content and Links look ugly because of the font. The style sheet is also not as well done as the rest of your designs.
Fall Away: The way that the text Fall Away is manipulated isn’t particularly attractive. I say just have normal text on an angle and it should look just as good, if not better. The small text of the content is just a tad on the irritating side. Yes, it looks nice but I don’t particularly like squinting. The colour of the text on the headers (white) is almost not readable with the background. Use a darker colour or change the background (or do both). The other thing about this layout is that the fact that is has no frames and the white background makes it look somewhat incomplete (lack of a better word). Perhaps you could add a border to the right side and change the background to a light orange or pink shade.

I am disappointed that none of the layouts that you have designed for visitors is as attractive as your main layout. It makes me think that you have put more effort into your own layout than the premades. It should really be the opposite or both should be equally well designed because it is the premades that are going to be on your site longer than the main layout which changes regularly.

Avatars / Icons

As a general comment, I think your icons are a bit over-designed. Simplicity is a good thing and contrast between colours isn’t always aesthetically appealing. Also, if you’re going to have text that’s not a ‘decoration’ make sure that they are readable.

Icon Textures

Not bad at all. In fact, I’m tempted to use some of these. However, is it necessary to put Iroka Designs on the preview? Actually, do you even need the previews at all? Why not just display the textures like your icons? It’ll be easier to download that way.

Wallpapers

All of these look kind of the same. An image slapped on a blank canvas then covered with some textures. Some of the images aren’t of a very good quality and the texts don’t seem to fit. My advice for you here is to try different techniques and spend more time and effort into these. I know you could do better because the graphics on your layouts were much better designed than these.

Final Statement

I have to say I’m slightly disappointed by the graphics that you have offered after seeing your main layout. I can see however, that you have developed a style of designing which isn’t bad. Experiment around with your program, though to further develop your style and improve your skills. Also, proof read what you write and make sure that everything makes sense. It might help if you used a more professional tone because this is not your blog or personal site.

Good luck with Iroka Designs!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Graphics/Resource. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.