Just wanted to update this and give you the url so you can see it in action.

Still not entirely finished (more content to put on the front page), but I'm slowly getting there.

http://www.joshuaestevens.com

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Josh Stevens | My Site
My CB Blog

Josh Buddy, Im gonna have to have a think on this one more later, but, i wanted to get some ideas to you though :)

Initial reactions is I can see where you want to go with this and I like the feel (of the finished item)

Letter spacing on Nav buttons, imo its too much, I would tighten it up a bit.

Im sure this is an area that you're already aware of and working on: content area (articles on left)... They feel a bit broken, I dont mean that in a harsh way its just the spacing is really strange to me. They feel like they want to be grouped up / tightened up quite a lot. Same goes with the comment bubbles, it feels like there is too much wasted space? One of my fav comment designs is From Jon Hicks, I really like his style, and I wonder if looking at how his used space on his comments would help you work on yours?

I'll try and have a think about this more for you if you want? Overall, I like where this is going, I just feel it needs to be tightened up a bit.

Great stuff Josh!

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jammindesigns.co.uk

Thanks for the crit Jammo (was wondering if anyone had any ideas lol...so quiet here lol).

I was looking at the articles today, and felt they had an uncomfortable "strangeness" to them. Perhaps something to help individualize each article, as well as some smaller line-height might help. I'll have to try that.

To be honest, I don't quite see the wasted space on the comments, but that's probably because I have been staring at this design 24/7 for the last week, and it's so familiar that things like that don't pop out at me. lol I should probably take a break from it, then come back to it with a fresh approach. Perhaps
an adjustment in line-height might help here as well?

I'll be tightening up the letter spacing in the navbar, that's a good suggestion

Thanks for your suggestions, I really appreciate the help/crit.

I think the front page will end up looking quite different. I'm imagining the cloud/grass box going across the top, and under to the left, another rounded box showing that is vertically-oriented showing off my latest work, and to the right of that will be an excerpt of the latest article.

So something like this:
______________________________
|header.................navbar.......|
| |__quote_______| |__comnts_.|
| |_latestwrk| article put here |
| |...............| article text.......|
| |...............| more text here.|
| |__________| article links......|
______________________________

if that makes any sense (don't blame ya if it doesn't lol...my digitial chicken scratch is hard to read)
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Josh Stevens | My Site
My CB Blog