Staff

Past Staff

Review for Hisakata Designs

I normally wince at right-aligned layouts - it’s a personal opinion, methinks… - and right now I’m cringing. For some reason, your layout looks over-crowded and I get the feeling that you tried to cram way too much stuff into one spot. [This might also be due to the fact that the content area looks so tiny compared to your overall layout.] I like, however, the soft purple color you used on the layout. Overall, I think the layout itself was well-designed. I just don’t think that the way you positioned it does it much justice.

Information

Site: Hisakata Designs
Type: Graphics/Resource
Owner: Arreku
Reviewed By: Sanosuke
Date Received: 7/11/06
Date Completed: 3/24/07
Preview

Presentation

So, right-aligned is something I’m usually against. It just feels weird to look at. Not to mention, there’s a huge border to the right, which, in my opinion, is unnecessary. Your border also isn’t smooth and the white-ish outlines cut off suddenly then repeat awkwardly:

Your content area is incredibly small compared to your layout. There’s too much white space, too much image space and not enough content space. It looks like everything is squished together, the pages are a lot longer than they should be, and overall it gives the layout a very smooshed look which isn’t preferable. If anything, your navigation seems to look like it’s wider than your content.

Content

Index

You don’t really need the “What’s being served” heading or anything below it. Just put a centered link to the archives under your updates, and it’ll be fine. The “What’s being served” is currently just taking up space.

“Web layouts being offered here are high quality and my best, so feel free to take a look.” –> “Web layouts offered here are of highest quality I can provide.” There’s no need for the rest of that sentence.
“If you have any questions, comments, and/or concerns, please feel free to contact me.” –> It would be nice if you linked “contact me” to the actual contact page instead of just bolding it.

About Us

I, personally, would put the Webmaster information at the top of the page since it is the shortest and has nothing to do with the other sections. A lot of the links that you’ve provided on your description page are broken; it’s good to go back and check up on them once in a while. I would also add “The” in front of all your eras [for example, The Freewebs Era and not just Freewebs Era.]

“I barely had experience, because I used to make layouts for my blog back on Xanga.” –> I’m not familiar with Xanga, but I’d assume that if you made layouts for Xanga, you must’ve had some experience in making them. Perhaps the more valid sentence would be “The only experience I had were making layouts for my blog back on Xanga.”
“I don’t think I would’ve even started web desinging.” –> You spelled “designing” wrong.
“After discovering Kylosa, I quickly packed my bags and moved into a new home. My little site was now hosted by Kevin of Kylosa which is now closed.” –> No use plugging the site if it’s already closed. It’s also repetitive, try something like, “After discovering Kylosa, which is now closed, I quickly packed my bags and moved into the new home hosted by Kevin.”
“This time, I was hosted by Emily of Myth Springs which mysteriously disappeared.” –> Again, no use plugging the site if it’s not there.
“Hisakata Designs is currently being hosted by SkyeFairy.” –> Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I do believe the owner of that site likes her site to be called “Skyefairy” with the F not caplitalized. It might seem like a small detail, but as a web design whose names are constantly misspelled, I felt like pointing it out.
“Some of you may be wondering why I decided to name my site Hisakata Designs.” –> Does it matter if we are or are not wondering? It seems as though this sentence is just taking up space, you’ll tell us the meaning of the name whether we’ve been wondering or not.
“That’s the reason why I chose Hisakata to be my site name.” –> Repetitive sentence. You’ve already mentioned it two sentences ago; it’s safe to just cut this one out.
“high quality designs..even if there’s only one” –> I personally think that’s a stretch of the “quality over quantity” phrase and I highly doubt people actually think that.
I believe that a website should have a good amount of content that are high quality, not too little and not too much. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to quit web designing (even if I close down this site in the future), because I just love turning things that only exist in my mind into things that can exist on canvas as well. I also enjoy managing this site (although I get frustrated sometimes), because I get to share my creations with other people in the community and exchange inspirations with other webmasters.

Terms of Use

It’d be wise to define “direct linking”, seeing as half the people who do it don’t realize they’re doing it. And you mentioned direct linking twice, once in general and once in web layouts. I find that unneeded and repetitive; just say it once.

Resources

Google isn’t an image resource. Just because you can find an image on Google doesn’t mean Google was the one who scanned it and uploaded it. It also doesn’t mean you can use it, which is what many people confuse. If I happened to find an image of a layout you made through Google, it still doesn’t mean I can use it to make an avatar for myself.

A disclaimer isn’t exactly a “resource”, so I don’t think it technically fits under the category. Perhaps renaming your page to “Resources/Disclaimer” might be better, or just put the Disclaimer on your “About Us” page, since it might fit better there.

Contact

It’d be nice if you listed your email there as well, as an “if this form doesn’t work, email me at insert email here.” Because from past experience, if the form doesn’t work and I have something urgent to say, where do I email you at? How do I get a hold of you?

“You can try looking for it on the credits page. If it isn’t there, then I made it myself.” –> Last time I checked, it was the “Resources” page.

Past Layouts

A small description might be nice, maybe a larger preview of the layout. Right now, I don’t see the point of the page. It’s just 20 or so words and two images.

Linkage

Your 365×65 banner is broken, and so is one of the link buttons to one of your exchanges. There are also some broken links, but I won’t waste the time pointing all of them out to you; you can do that on your own free time.

Layouts

For the most part, I enjoyed looking at your premades. There’s a specific style that you have, and I like it. The only problems I have with your layouts is that for the most part, they’re large. The text doesn’t start until halfway down the page in my 1024 x 768 resolution, and I shudder to think how far it goes down in a 800 x 600 resolution. The problem with that is, visitors want to read the content as soon as they click on the link to a page. They don’t want to waste the time scrolling down an incredibly big image every single time. [Not to mention, it loads pretty slow on slower computers.]

You also have huge ‘watermarks’ on your premades. It’s not neccessary to put “Layout by So-and-So” so large on the layout; it takes away from the aesthetics of the images you use. By definition, “watermark” is supposed to be in the background and harder to catch, so that people know it’s there, but it’s not visible and in-your-face.

With that said, I’d have to say my favorite layout out of the bunch was Spike Spiegel.

Naming your premades “DIV” layouts is misleading, seeing as your only DIV layout, Smile Again, is more half DIV and half tables. [Not to mention, it doesn’t work in IE6 at all.]
I don’t like how the navigation in your Iframes layouts are ambiguous. How is a visitor supposed to know where to click for the navigation? It’s also not incredibly smart to restrict the navigation to a few links; few people actually have exactly four links to put on their sites.
Kept Clandestine is incredibly bright, and the text color could be a lot darker as it’s blinding me when I try to read.

Final Statement

Overall, I’ve visited your site before and I like your style in designing. However, I find a lot of your layouts are not very useful. While they’re aesthetic, they’re also incredibly large and at times the navigation isn’t very convenient. And you have to keep in mind that when making premades, you not only need aesthetics, you also need functionability.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 24th, 2007 at 7:30 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.

3 Comments to “Hisakata Designs”

Arreku Says:
March 27th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Thank you for reviewing my site. I thought your criticism on my layouts were really well done, because now I know exactly where to fix it and how to improve them. Anywho, I’ve put my site on a hiatus now to fix up things here and there. Thanks for your help!

DarkGrave Says:
April 16th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
“Web layouts offered here are of highest quality I can provide.” should be -> “Web layouts offered here are of “the” highest quality I can provide.”

Sanosuke Says:
April 22nd, 2007 at 1:18 pm
My bad, thanks for correcting me on that.