4OUR

[Sunjo]

Would like some opinions on the skin now that it's coded. Suggestions also welcome.

4our.proboards.com/

[alterheld]

*jaw drops* as i assume everyone's does, when they look at that - cause that is just plain awesome-ness.
no real big things, just two small things.

if you could, make the category title text (overture, the dirt road, etc) bigger; so it stands out.
second... um... ok - nope, nope; cant think of a second thing. just incredible.
if you were a student, id give you an A

[Sunjo]

Thanks alterheld, much appreciated.

I'll consider increasing the size and experiment around and find what looks best.

[dude]

I'll pre-face this with the premise that on the whole I'm not a fan of interface designs in general so my opinion might be a bit unfairly negative. I think my main reason for this is that, in my experience, unless you produce a truly incredibly stunning interface on which every detail has been pored over for hours, it just doesn't work for me aesthetically - slight flaws in such a complex form of design tend to compound themselves i.e. when you've got say 1000 elements to a design versus 10, on average you're gonna have 100 times as many flaws.

Anyway, on to actually critiquing your design:
- I feel the style of the main 4our text doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the design. You've got all these complex interfacey elements and then just a very flat header text. However I don't think it would look any better if you applied some kind of interface style to the text itself but maybe there needs to be some kind of organic interaction between the menu bar and the text - perhaps have a few tendrils wrap around the text or something like that so it feels like it's part of the design
- I feel the hierarchy of the menu text isn't quite right - at best it's about the same as the main content of the page. Also not sure I like the rectangular hover effect; something a bit more traditional and glowy would work better for me.
- Header text shouldn't be on the right - when you look at the website the first place you look is top left in the same way you do for any type of media. If the left side was just white space it might work but it isn't - your eye is instantly drawn to the interface element on the far left rather than the header text
- I don't like the asymmetric balance of left and right white space and this is only at a resolution of 1366x768 - I imagine it would feel even more bizarre at higher resolutions. Admittedly that's not something that's very easy to fix without completely changing the design but would be perhaps achievable if you were to extend the current interface element on the left out even further so at higher resolutions you can see more or less of that image.
- I feel the 'waves' in the menu bar should be toned down a little. Again it seems to dominate and distract from the actual content of the menu itself.
- You've got this shattering effect on the right hand side of the menu but the bar itself doesn't seem to really be collapsing as much as it perhaps ought. The edge should maybe be a bit more rounded at the top so you can see it disintegrating a bit more.
- The repeating background on the left side of page is a bit obvious with respect to the visibility of the repeat - you should maybe get rid of the little circular splodges so it's not quite so clear what the pattern is. You can also see this, perhaps a little more subtly, on the right hand side.
- Having seemed to have made nothing but negative comments it's worth saying that I think the actual design of the main content of the forum itself is really excellent. There's very little I can find fault with. I think perhaps the welcome guest text should be shifted down and right a bit so it doesn't overlap - although that was quite clearly a design choice that you made and I guess with the rounded corner there'd be a bit too much margin around the forum if you did that. Doesn't look quite right atm but not sure what you could do to fix that. The only other thing is maybe you need a little more contrast in certain areas like board descriptions and the info centre - it's readable but not ideal imo.

That's about all I have to say I guess - I'm not very good at verbalising the things that I do like so realise that there are plenty of things that I think are great about it. I'm also a lot better at finding flaws than I am at fixing them. I'm sure there must be a saying about the best food critics being entirely unable to cook themselves. Think this would be quite applicable to myself having not really designed anything in years.

[Sunjo]

Hey dude,

Thanks for the in-depth CC. It's always great to get CC with effort put into it.

The only thing that really stood out to me from your CC is the repeating background on the left, as that's something I noticed as well, the biggest issue is making something repeatable without the viewer knowing it's a pattern while keeping file sizes down. (transparent PNGs are HUGE since they're uncompressed, so images need to be kept as small as possible) but it's something I planned to fix in the future.

The shattering effect is basically the glass being decompressed so violently that the glass shoots outwards rather than falls downwards, so the glass as a whole isn't shattering as much as a specific weak area being opened. (in my stupid concept anyway xD)

As for the waves being toned down, this is actually something on my checklist of things to fix in the staff board. I've just been lazy about it after re-working the water through over 300 layers now.

And the thing about the asymmetric balance and bringing the interface out more was something that a lot of consideration went into, the biggest problem is that we've got to avoid scrollbars for smaller resolutions and allow all viewers to see the entire design. While this sacrifices appeal by allowing negative space for wide screen users, not a great deal can be done since making a design like this fluid would be extremely tedious.

As far as the menu and banner, these are things I wasn't totally pleased with originally as well. But I've grown to rather like the menu. And the logo is likely going to be re-designed in the near future but the placement probably won't change because the logo being on the right brings balance to the design imo, stacking it on the left would just clutter things.

And trust me, every detail has been closely looked at with 4OUR, with a PSD that's 120MB and 2,113 layers big. xD

Again, thanks for the feedback, I'll definitely be fixing some of the issues you pointed out.

[dude]

Jul 2, 2011 10:42:53 GMT -8 Sunjo said:

Hey dude,

Thanks for the in-depth CC. It's always great to get CC with effort put into it.

The only thing that really stood out to me from your CC is the repeating background on the left, as that's something I noticed as well, the biggest issue is making something repeatable without the viewer knowing it's a pattern while keeping file sizes down. (transparent PNGs are HUGE since they're uncompressed, so images need to be kept as small as possible) but it's something I planned to fix in the future.

The shattering effect is basically the glass being decompressed so violently that the glass shoots outwards rather than falls downwards, so the glass as a whole isn't shattering as much as a specific weak area being opened. (in my stupid concept anyway xD)

As for the waves being toned down, this is actually something on my checklist of things to fix in the staff board. I've just been lazy about it after re-working the water through over 300 layers now.

And the thing about the asymmetric balance and bringing the interface out more was something that a lot of consideration went into, the biggest problem is that we've got to avoid scrollbars for smaller resolutions and allow all viewers to see the entire design. While this sacrifices appeal by allowing negative space for wide screen users, not a great deal can be done since making a design like this fluid would be extremely tedious.

As far as the menu and banner, these are things I wasn't totally pleased with originally as well. But I've grown to rather like the menu. And the logo is likely going to be re-designed in the near future but the placement probably won't change because the logo being on the right brings balance to the design imo, stacking it on the left would just clutter things.

And trust me, every detail has been closely looked at with 4OUR, with a PSD that's 120MB and 2,113 layers big. xD

Again, thanks for the feedback, I'll definitely be fixing some of the issues you pointed out.

No worries - it's the first thing I've posted in here in quite a while so I thought I might as well make it a long one My point about the repeating background was not that you needed to make it a longer image so it repeats less but more that it should be a very repeaty pattern i.e. if it was just pure noise or something it would only need to be very short and you still wouldn't be able to see it was repeating (not suggesting noise would look right). I just think the actual pattern you've chosen for it is perhaps not subtle enough. Also, I wasn't saying the logo would look better just shifted over but rather that the whole thing would feel a bit more balanced for me if for example you literally flipped everything in a mirror - on my monitor at least the logo just appears somewhat lost; it isn't on the left, it isn't on the right and it isn't the centre it's just floating about a bit.

Think my comment about not liking interfaces designs is partly from having attempted them a few times myself - I get to about 100 layers and already I'm bored. Really wouldn't fancy doing another 2013

[Sunjo]

Thanks again for the suggestions/comments dude. From memory you've always given me amazing CC.

I've fixed the logo up a bit, you can view the logo poll in the Saloon board to see the before/after to compare if you like. I'm personally much happier with the re-vamp.

I've also fixed the left side repetition, it should be barely noticeable now. (well as little as possible while still keeping it interesting and repeating properly on such a small image)

I'll be fixing the water over the next few days as well. Just thought I'd let you know all of this so you could comment on my changes if you wanted to.

Thanks again. <3