My studio website mockup - Thoughts?

Melb_shredder

Melb_shredder

Orpheus: Melodic Death
Mar 9, 2008
2,852
1
36
Melbourne
So.. I figure it's about time now that I'm getting more serious with my audio engineering that I get a site up and running... I do web design as a main job, but I'm the developer guy, the code monkey, I suck at design haha, so here's one of my first design attempts on my own!

Thoughts??
Cheers,
Chris

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/306055/Monolith-StudiosINDEX.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/306055/Monolith-StudiosGEAR.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/306055/Monolith-StudiosWORKS.jpg

EDIT: Ok... I have some other stuff uploading currently.. I'LL REPORT BACK when the images are up! Cheers
EDIT 2: IMAGES ARE UP! CHEERS
 
I like old video games...but pages for something like that with the look of an old video game? na, sorry!
Especially the combination of the font and the speaker, the colors are ok, if you want to use the font,
use less fancy stuff on it, you don't need the color gradient and the glow (or bevel/emboss, I think you
know what I mean, I am used to the German terms).

I like the idea with the faders as V in services and the speaker as O in studio, but this looks like it would
have been cool 10 years ago ;)

Maybe I am a bit harsh about this, but I wrote my diploma about logodesign and CI, so I am used to being
harsh about this, I would either get rid of the speaker as O in the logo or change it completly.

The basic layout is cool, too, very simple and clean, my only problem is the way you designed it, good idea
to put the twitter conversation on the right side, because you get informed about all the news and the
position is good because most people look at that place in the beginning, you don't need many menue buttons
so it's a good decision, to just use a simple menue like that, no need for breadcrump navigation and stuff like
that.

If you want to change the logo and need help, just hit me up. Really digging your stuff, but I think the site
could look way better.
 
Stef! Not harsh at all man, like I said, I'm at the bottom of the barrel for design sadly, I'm just getting at it myself and my partner will probably make a lot of changes to be honest. But I wanted to go at it on my own first.
The layout stuff in terms of focus points etc, I'm pretty confident with and of course the functionality etc but actual aesthetic though is not my strongest point. I'm going to muck around with the bevel stuff etc, however it looked boring when I didn't have anything like that on.
Curiously though, you mentioned not liking the speaker as the O in the logo? Any reason in particular?

Cheers dude!
 
Imho, it's a bit to "standard" for something like a studio and the way you did it, it just doesn't fit in
really well, to use a more musical example (please, don't hate me, it's a pretty drastic one :D ):
listen to metallica/lou reed's lulu, the backings are the font-the speaker is lou's voice, it just sounds
like it was recorded for something different and doesn't fit the mix very well.

It's just to big, like 50% bigger than the actual O would have been, and because it's "behind" the rest
of the letters it looks like it's just a pic behind the word than being part of it.
I could try to do a logo for you, just hit me up via pm or facebook.
 
StefTD said:
I like old video games...but pages for something like that with the look of an old video game? na, sorry!
Especially the combination of the font and the speaker, the colors are ok, if you want to use the font,
use less fancy stuff on it, you don't need the color gradient and the glow (or bevel/emboss, I think you
know what I mean, I am used to the German terms).

I like the idea with the faders as V in services and the speaker as O in studio, but this looks like it would
have been cool 10 years ago ;)

Maybe I am a bit harsh about this, but I wrote my diploma about logodesign and CI, so I am used to being
harsh about this, I would either get rid of the speaker as O in the logo or change it completly.

The basic layout is cool, too, very simple and clean, my only problem is the way you designed it, good idea
to put the twitter conversation on the right side, because you get informed about all the news and the
position is good because most people look at that place in the beginning, you don't need many menue buttons
so it's a good decision, to just use a simple menue like that, no need for breadcrump navigation and stuff like
that.

If you want to change the logo and need help, just hit me up. Really digging your stuff, but I think the site
could look way better.
Click to expand...

I echo most of this!

Might want to say that it looks pretty "draft"ish, but as you said it's a starting point.

Yeah the speaker for the "O" is quite big atm, and also it hasn't got any "depth" to it...if you get what I mean?
Generally the whole page/logo/colors look pretty 90's hehe
 
Everything screams PHP-Nuke, which is a bad thing dude. These kinda sites (studio sites) don't tend to have a lot of content, so it can be quite difficult to make it seem like you actually offer something.
I think you should scrap it. Use Wordpress (if you're not already). Woothemes or Elegant Themes might have something that can suit, Woothemes tend to suit blogs and magazines, Elegant Themes tend to have a more "CMS" approach, which may be a good idea for a business. Or you could always use a Wordpress theme framework (Hybrid, Genesis, Starkers etc.) HTML, CSS, PHP and maybe some Jquery - you shouldn't have any probs!
I'd ditch the dark theme and go for something lean & clean, it's more professional. Also, research web typography - it will do wonders for your site.
And if you wanna get code happy and earn extra bonus points, make the site responsive.
BTW, I work in a similar job as you - except that I do get to design too! :)
 
Hey Digital, actually it WILL be in wordpress, it's going to be attached to the home site of the parent company. So it'll be running completely off of a CMS no doubt. So most people will be visiting the parent site first!
Either way I'll keep you guys up to date and see how it goes! Cheers :)
 
Yeah, Wordpress is nice alright. I'd just recommend that you go for a clean, simple solution instead of a design that looks like it was designed for 640x480 with horrible font & colour choices.
I do some pretty cool stuff with Wordpress from a programming point of view on a regular basis (templates, custom post types, custom taxonomies, custom meta boxes for custom fields etc.) but I often just grab a premium theme or html site template (and make a Wordpress theme from the PSDs) that matches what the client needs and then I customise it to hell and back! :)
http://themeforest.net/category/wordpress/
http://themeforest.net/category/site-templates

Hope that helps.
 
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