Planning site

[aray2214]

I'm just starting out in web design, and am making a new website template for a local business (for really cheap). Here is the mockup I have so far. Any suggestions?

 

http://i442.photobucket.com/albums/qq148/st1rn3r/mockup.png

Edited January 18, 2009 by aray2214

[Andrea]

The purpose of the spaces in URLs is to spam-proof links - in your case, that's not an issue so I zapped the spaces and made it a real URL - however, the link leads to a 'forbidden' page.

 

Additionally, we largely promote clean, validating, accessible, and standard-compliant coding, so a link to an actual webpage would be much more productive to get you useful feedback than just a picture.

[aray2214]

Weird, that link worked a second ago.. and I put in the spaces because everyone else seemed too. I figured that there was an anti-spam plugin or something that wouldn't let you post with URLs.

 

As for the design, I am first a programmer, and this is one of my first journeys into design. For this reason, I am more worried about how it looks than how it is written. I can write compliant, validating xhtml/css in my sleep, it's the design issue that I have a tough time tackling. Usually I have someone else make the mockup, and then I code it.. But I want to try and learn design.

 

http://i442.photobucket.com/albums/qq148/st1rn3r/mockup.png

[falkencreative]

Seems to me that the primary area you could work on is typography...

 

-- font sizes seem a bit off. The body text and right navigation could be larger to improve readability, and the main header "header" could be smaller

-- If those are quotes around the "Eat, Enjoy, Tell a friend" text, perhaps you should change the font -- it's hard to tell whether those diagonal lines are quotes or not

-- the logo seems fuzzy, and it would help to have a little more space below the "McGlades" text

-- also, be aware that there is a lot more placeholder text than will actually be in the final site. It often works best to use the final copy or at least do a good approximation of the length. The design will seem to change if you have two lines of text, compared to 20 lines.