Business Design

Okay just a couple things...

The color palette is really bland. The dark grey would have worked had you used a bit more variation. Instead you just sort of switched from the background grey to a slightly lighter grey. This can be done, but it needs to be done in a balanced way. Your palette has just as much control on your overall appearance as your content. I also noticed the only actual color you used on your nongraphic elements was yellow and blue. While that may have worked, as I said before, it needs some more balance. Your headers are the same color as your content, and I see (maybe it's my monitor) differing hues of white around the content itself. One thing you should always try to avoid is using stark contrast colors on extremely dark backgrounds, ie., black backgrounds should never be combined with a FFF foreground. It strains the eyes and makes your content impossible to read. Instead try for a slightly less bright grey or tan. Something that compliments your color palette but at the same time doesn't blind your visitors.

The overall look of the site is a bit bland as well. This is a business website, and I guess in some ways there needs to be a certain "dismal" tone to it, but what you're looking for in business themes is minimalism, not dismal. You want your viewers to be interested in your site, not bored to death with the layout. I'm not saying you need to throw down some cool ass 3d renders or stocks of some anime chick, but your theme needs to suite the intention of the design. I find a good way to get my sense of style down is by looking at the competition and what they've done. Everyone has their own interpretation of their business, but if you were working for, say, a cement production company, you might look for other cement manufacturers and look at what they do. Involving your competition is a key attribute in clientel work. Since this wasn't for a specific client, you might have focused on what particular type of company, and went from there. Practice is good, but noone likes a generic layout.

The text in the center of the page is centered. Why? The only reason I ask is because there are many things that go wrong with centered text. #1 It's hard to read when it continues on many lines. For body text or content text, centering is an almost taboo thing to do. Mostly because it's easier to read text that is aligned left or right. In your case, the position of the centered text may have some significance, but because of the vagueness of the layout, we will never know just how important that particular text is. In my strict opinion, whatever it is, you can probably left align it or right align it, based on your layout, and still achieve the same importance factor.

The last thing I noticed, and probably the most important: What kind of company site is this? I see a couple blocks of text with suggestive content like "Now we work on" and "Our References", but the references section looks like an image gallery. The problem with all of this is there is no "call to action". A call to action basically helps visitors identity and coordinate specific actions correlating to your particular business. For instance, a web design firm could say "View more of our work" and that would be an effective call to action if done correctly. You want to give purpose and meaning to your site. Even informational sites can use calls to action in order to create efficiency. This layout has nothing of the sort. I look at it, and I think "where would I go after this?". The vagueness of the site kind of helps that hindered thinking, but beyond that, I feel like I know this would be a one page ticket to nowhere.

Overall I think you need to work on your style. Bland layouts work in certain situations, but you want to be able to exercise your talents in all aspects. Drawing a few boxes and dropping down text and images should be a more complex process, and I feel like you didn't spend more than maybe 2-3 hours on this at the most. Tighten down your typography (the navigation font should be aliased, but isn't) and make sure you introduce colors that would suite the theme of the design. Try to be original with your ideas, and lose the "template cliches" you might come across (i.e. the diamond on your navigation button), things that serve no real purpose and just fill space.

You're on the right track, but you need to work on a few areas. Hope I helped!