Two Five Designs Final Site Design

[twofivedesigns]

Went through 3 versions, everyone like the first, put the second one up and they said 1st was better so I made version 3 which will remain forever. Included flash, and javascript which I learned this year.

http://www.twofivedesigns.com

Feed and thoughts are appreciated.

[Ptka]

Could you please keep the advertising to the Advertising Section. Thanks.
Moved.

[Ritz]

Designs look nice.

From a fellow hip hop head, T.R.O.Y kicks ass.

[twofivedesigns]

Why did this get moved? I want feed on the design aspect and coding.

[Ptka]

Sorry for the mis-understanding, when I looked at the post, it looked like advertising to me.
Could you just make a new post in the Digital Art section?
Thanks.

[Chris]

Actually, this should go in design / interfaces. I'll see if an admin can move it there.

[Ptka]

Ah, never even thought of that, thanks Sol.

[Proflax]

Nice, I think its pretty sweet design you got there.

[Chris]

Here's my critique.

The first thing I noticed was the load time. It's a little bit extensive, so you may need to look at optimizing the size of your images a bit so they don't take quite as long to load. I run an average speed cable / high speed internet, so I would guess this is a majority usage speed. I tested it on mozilla at 56k and it took 45 seconds for the whole page to load.

The next thing I thought was a little unnecessary was the use of flash for your header. Now don't get me wrong, I am a flash advocate (hence the alias and identity), but as such, I am a total advocate for using flash the way it's intended to be. You can argue that flash was originally an animation tool, and that would be a valid argument, but your use of animation with the flash element is minimal at best. I like the javascript embed for the flash element, but in every case where flash may be used, I liked to ask myself this question, "what does flash bring to the table that I can't do with anything else?". As an eyecandy tool, it's fantastic, but there needs to be some work involved, and it needs to stand out, if that's what you're going for. In this case, I don't see much being added to the overall design of the site from your header. It could be static, and I would still appreciate your site for what it is.

The color palette is good, except for the saturated red. I like red and grey together, but a rich red is a visibility issue, and some people actually have a hard time reading text on such a noncontrasting color (as in your navigation). It's rough to find a color that will stand out on red and not actually be painful. Maybe you should wiggle the hues around a little bit, to darken or lighten the shade of red and help with visibility. Just a thought.

The shadow dividers are nice, I see you are consistent with your styles between each of the sites I've seen done from you. They are nice, and help the overall layout, but the way it looks now, they seem very naked. I get the distinct impression that something else on the sides is waiting to load, but never does. A good way to avoid having this happen is to be consistent all around your site. The dividers give it an unbalanced look when they arent accompanied by other elements. Having them stretch out further may help, but in either case, I can see the style your going for. Less is more tends to be the focus of this particular design.

Your twitter app seems nice, although needs some padding adjustment. The content is really squeezed, and the box overall seems a little oddly placed. It's almost as if it comes out of nowhere, and has little relevance to the rest of the site. Networking apps like this tend to be better as footer elements rather than major focal points, like this. But at the same time, I like the fact that you want to incorporate other elements into your site, and that may have a positive impact.

The only other thing I saw that may be a problem area was the popups for your galleries. I have always stayed away from using popups on any of my designs primarily because of the advent of popup blockers. Some visitors block them religiously, others don't. Users who may luck out and use mozilla will receive a notice saying a popup was blocked, but most others will never know there was a popup, and just keep on clicking. Frustration ensues shortly after they realize "nothing" happens when they try to view your work, and then they leave. So you may want to pursue alternative forms of gallery presentation to ensure that all of your visitors can properly view your work as a part of your site, and not risk being blocked, or even have to be enabled to see the work you have. Not only that, you have ALL of your work on one page, so if the user has a slow connection, it could take awhile to load all of those images. Thumbnails may be a better choice for this. And by thumbnails I mean actually using smaller images. Resizing a smaller image does not make it a thumbnail, and it doesnt by any means take less time to load. Most browsers load the full image prior to resizing it.

I was going to give you some validation information, but I see you're using html 4.0 transit, so I won't bother. If you are interested in pursuing validation, I will gladly assist you.

Good job otherwise, keep it up man.