Version 2 - TwoFiveDesigns.com

[twofivedesigns]

Version 1 was just too boring IMO

http://www.twofivedesigns.com

feed on the design would be great.

[Tooms]

pretty bad ass IMO. maybe add some brighter fx here or there but im guessing anyone who logs on to this site will be impressed

[BonesMa]

yeah I agree looks realy tight great stuff

[Papa]

this belongs in deisgn and interfaces

[Papa]

this is hot. The black and white look sick! i just wish there was a color int here somewhere. Bright saturated colors are extremely in this year. If you add in a bright pruple or soemthing i think this template would be absoltuly baddass.

Sick layout though. Your templates are just amazing.

[Chris]

Just a couple things...(sorry if I murder the cnc, websites are what I do :P)

the title
don't forget to give your documents a title -- see title bar for "Untitled Document".

the navigation
The extreme white is sort of offkey from the rest of the site. For some reason, due to placement, it sticks out and kind of takes my attention away from the content. Also, the shadow rollovers aren't particularly my favorite.

target audience
This is something I feel like needs to be strengthened. I get that you're a designer, and you probably want clients to ask you for work. But from the look of your website, I get the feeling that if I were a doctor in need of a site, I probably wouldn't come to you, seeing as you only accept work from rap artists. Not that I am generalizing your work, but that's just the impression I get, based on what your portfolio design tells me. Alot of your clientel will base their opinions on the first thing they see; your layout and the imagery you use. What I find that really helps me is to try to embody my work with a particular object or image that could adequately portray my services. I'm not really a fan of the whole "impress your buddies" forte on portfolio sites, because that doesn't really scream productivity. But again, if the direction you wish to take is different from what I have assumed, none of this would apply of course.

consistency
I like the palette choice because of it's simplicity. But on your homepage it sets a standard. On the other pages, it almost feels like you forced certain elements to be a particular color, just so they would match the rest of the site. Especially on the portfolio page. A little color wouldn't hurt, but if it's not what you're going for, don't incorporate it. Just try to balance your use of white vs. black, especially on the front page. On most sites that try to implement more than one section and give it its' own background, ie on yours with the black and white, size seems to be the key. Stepping back and looking at it, I can't see why the "Pricing" section needs to be the only thing in a black background, especially since the section itself is so tiny.

social net. buttons
They seem really out of place. Normally, I would expect to see those on the bottom footer, or somewhere near a contact page, but in this layout, they follow a section totally irellevant to their purpose. I saw that they all link to myspace, so I assume this is not a finished product, so I won't elaborate any more on that. :P

footer
build it up more. :P You have alot of elements that could be used in the footer, to give it a more meaty appearance. A line of text is acceptable, but it looks like an extention of one of the paragraphs above (ie your index page), and seems to just "sit" there. May want to try and put some meat on them there bones...

Portfolio section
The one thing I dislike most about some designers, is their choice to showcase their work as direct links to images. It' a litle known fact that this can sometimes force users to actually download the images they are being linked to, based on their browser settings. I don't like having to hit my back button to get back to the showcase to view more work. It's a little bit of a hassle, and clients will see this, and base their opinions off of it. What I would suggest as an alternative, since there isn't alot of (well...any) elaboration on the pieces; instead of linking directly to the images, why not make a seperate page for each image, and explain your role in the work, and what it was supposed to be for, whether it was for a client or for personal work. This attention to detail will pay off in the end, as clients will know you strived for a certain objective, and was able to sucessfully achieve that objective and still be able to say what it was you were striving for. You have alot of good work, why not take the time to show how much you care about your work by giving it that extra boost of effort?

Now comes the nitty gritty...

coding deficiencies
Firebug (and w3c) ate you alive. Well, not really, but there are some errors:

On line 184, you closed your document by using an end tag for body and html. But there are tags the follow, and it throws errors up saying you omitted an end tag. This isn't the case because all of your divs are closed. The problem is, you used multiple </body> and </html> tags in your document. So remove the end tags for body and html on line 186, and you should be good to go. I wouldn't suggest having extra information after you close your document, since that could potentially throw IE into quirks mode, and may affect the appearance of your page. For safe measures, put line 186 ( </iframe></noscript></object></layer></span></div></table></body></html><!-- adsok --> ) before your end tags on the document. This will solve the omitted end tag error.

There are several alt errors, these can be fixed by ensuring that you provide an "alt" property for every image you have. This is primarily an accessibility issue, and for those that may have images disabled (there are users that use browsers that interpret images based primarily on the alt property), they will have a hard time looking at your content, although it's probably a good guess that those users won't be looking at your page to begin with. But as before, its good measure to include the alt property just in case.

Fix those errors, and your document (index anyway) will be error-free and validate on w3c.


Good job overall, sorry if I went overboard, but I take web-design very seriously, so I apply that logic in my critique as well. Hope I helped out!

[artisticstudio]

really nice design. apart from the huge list above.lol. but only small things.

[zerosaver]

now that's hot. give your page some love though. I don't think it's right for it to remain "Untitled 1"