hsb

[Tesseract]

OK, you can call me a copy if you want ;P

Thoughts? unfinished, and may be scrapped :/
And the bg is shizen, I know.
And I also realise that there should be filler text, but I couldn't be bothered at the time..

[Shadow]

Pretty solid design. I like the change of colors from red to green etc.
Like you said the bg is shiz. The only thing is that it is empty and I kinda wanna see what it would look like when it has filler text/images/whatever else goes in. Put some more into it

[Tesseract]

OK, added some fillershiz.

And a mysterious "Brightness" bar to the right... what do you think it will be for?? ;P
BG isn't going to get fixed until I code the thing, too lazy to do patterns atm.

[Daemon]

I like it. Its nice clean and simple. Gj

[unit_number_43]

The background tile is very nice.

The colors are distracting, and the way you have the horizontal bar connecting the two vertical sidebars causes my eyes to bounce from one side to the other without ever stopping to see what is between them.

The design lacks structure and direction. Although "eye catching" the rainbow colored bars don't have the strength to direct the viewers attention. This is because the color changes instead of staying solid.

[Tesseract]

So, in short:

Remove one or both of sidebars.
Tone down on gradients, try and keep colours same/similiar.
Accentuate content

Anything I missed? I'll have a go on monday.

[unit_number_43]

I'd get rid of the gradient altogether.

[Tesseract]

OK, so a kinda half removed the gradient at the top, and that looks shit, so I'm trying to think of the best colour for it... The sides can have them removed easily, though, just need to get off my ass and do it :/

http://xs.to/xs.php?h=xs216&d=07251&f=hsb5.png

[unit_number_43]

You're probably asking yourself why rob's colorful gradient design "works" and yours doesn't (according to me anyway).

The answer is because rob is using the most attractive part of the design (the colors) as a backdrop for the information that he's showing. By making the text area attractive to the eye (making it a rainbow) you immediatly are drawn to it and in kind are drawn to the text areas.

Your design uses a framework look, the eye is attracted to everything around the text area; but never directly to the text itself. Use something as a backdrop to direct attention to the text/images.