Spigot Design redesign

The last thing a Web site designer should go live with is an unbeta'd site design, but oh well. Here are a few quick comments:

1. The spigot mark is such a simple Jetsons-esque design that it needs to be perfect to work well. I know it's abstract, but it looks too much like the first path you put down before you adjusted the arcs. The lower left edge of the spigot's end (where water would come out if it were real) is almost at negative, and the arc just above that is too sharp an angle, although if you improve the first area, it might work as is.

2. Having to scroll down to see the whole page is so "Front Page from the 90s". That doesn't say good things about your resources, no matter what your copy says.

3. The testimonial from Matthew Nelson contains an odd phrase that you might want to tidy up, with his permission: "I think he totally has his pulse on what is cutting edge...." I believe what he meant was, "I think he totally has his finger on the pulse of what is cutting edge...." Even so, it kinda doesn't make much sense -- cutting edges don't have pulses, do they? -- but I won't go into that. (Did he totally go, like, "totally"? Like, awesome. Clients are getting kewler every day ;-)

4. Do you really want to go with such wide blocks of copy? That's difficult to read and kinda My Spacey. Taken with the Front Page scrolling thing, the overall impact is much less than it could be.

Mara

Great site! The page is about 198K which is acceptable (try to design your pages at 160K or less for best/fastest loading times) and you use css and divs to great effect!

I'd just say that your site is a bit too 'blog' like and needs more graphics in the header; your other work is much more impactful than your portfolio site for this reason alone. Logo larger and hierarchy, lots of text is hitting me really hard, and your best quote is buried at the bottom of the page, a serious scroll down. Move it up.

Remember hierarchy, it is your friend.

Otherwise, wonderful site! Loving it.

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Powerpoint is not a design application

And you only have 7 errors to fix before your site's css is fully W3C compliant:
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?profile=css21&warning=0&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fspigotdesign.com%2F

Get those worked out if you can for best cross-browser compatibility. Use the '*' star tag in the first line of your css rather than calling out all the different items to set default values.

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Powerpoint is not a design application

...sometimes you just SCARE me!

:-)

Mara

Before I actually critique, I want to mention that I think it's awesome you live in Park City. I visit occasionally at art shows. Fun place.

Okay, anyway - To start off, It looks way too trendy, like a lot of the newer development sites out there. I was looking in your portfolio, and it's not a good sign when some of your client's sites look much better than your own. I think one thing that's making this layout not work is (at least on the home page) you've got ALL horizontal lines. Horizontal lines are used to stabilize, but I think if you only have them, it creates boredom and a sense of "text sliding off the page." Does that make sense? If you look at Clear Focus they have similar horizontal shapes that hold the sections - however, they make it more dynamic by adding sections of vertical space.

It also has more of a blog type of feel (as mentioned before, I believe.)

I agree about the logo, it looks like an afterthought. You want people to remember your name, and the logo attached to it. In the case of English, the viewer would first see it in the top left. I don't think you necessarily have to have it there, but the size and position now makes it look like a sponsor or something. Also, you lose some hierarchy because of how many fonts are being used.

I guess my major concern is you're called "Spigot DESIGN", however, it looks more like you're just a developer, with some beta program that will cost $19.95. My suggestion is not to copy the trends in web design, but use them as inspiration to make the site YOU. :)

I hope that wasn't too harsh. I'm on cold medicine.

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Perfectly Lost Designs

Thanks everyone for your input. Here's a few of my thoughts:

@mara
1. Spigot Mark: This is the logo I've been using for years, and you are right, the curves could be cleaned up, and I'll be fixing it.

2. Scrolling: I disagree about scrolling. Most users have scroll wheels these days, and to me its little effort to flick a finger to get to the info. I wasn't around during the 'Front Page' scrolling days, but I was around for the Flash/JavaScript 'jam everything above the fold' days, and personally, I'm glad they're over.

3. Quote: Agreed. I'll clean this up with his permission.

4. Long blocks of text: I see your point here. Its something I thought about, and ultimately decided to go with. I've kept the font size up that the actual word count is similar to sites with smaller blocks of text, and smaller font size. A more ideal solution might be to make the layout fluid. That may come in v2.

@natobasso
1. Blog-like/header graphics: This was actually intentional. The goal of the site is to tell business owners what I do, and to hopefully have them hire me. That's why I open with what I do, and what I can do for business owners. Also, much like I don't hang a nice painting on a wall with highly intricate wallpaper, I'd like my work to speak louder than its container.

2. CSS Validation Errors: Thanks for pointing these out. They are all fixed now. I actually forgot to run validation here... my bad. One note about the *html issue... these errors are caused by IE6 css hacks in my stylesheet. I've moved them to a specific ie6 stylesheet and put a conditional comment in the head of each page to circumvent this. Interestingly, the IE7 hack (*:first-child+html) doesn't give this error. I know using hacks are not a best practice, but I haven't come up with (or studied enough) the proper way to get things to look right in IE.

@stephanie
1. Park City is a great place to live.

2. Horizontal: Good point. The home page could use a bit of break from the horizontal. I will have to deeply consider how to remedy this without breaking the overall one column layout.

3. Spigot Design: While I am a 'designer' I am a business owner first and foremost with the idea to sell custom web design. The site is not about me but about what my business can do for other business owners. We probably disagree on how to accomplish that, but I don't find that being 'trendy' is necessarily a bad thing. No, this design is not groundbreaking, but as a designer, I've always admitted to myself that I ride slightly behind the curve, and I'm ok with that. I'm into making a living, not awards. Thanks for your comments, and trust me that I will take them into consideration on the next version of this site, when that day comes.

Thanks again, these are all good insights and I'll be taking steps to make future changes.

Bryan

~ spigotdesign.com