Leeds Web Design Studio

[texelate]

I've just launched a redesign of my freelance web design site. Like the old version I've still gone for a clean, clear look but this time it's slightly more corporate and it's a bit more sales driven.

 

All graphics were done in Photoshop. It's a semantic table-less layout hand-coded in TextWrangler: XHTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Apache ModReWrite. All on Mac OS X.

 

www.texelate.co.uk

 

I look forward to comments.

[nrg_alpha]

Overall, I think it has a nice look to it. Rather professional.

 

I'm just examining the homepage.. a few things I noted..

 

-it took a bit of time to fully load for me (slow)

-your homepage doesn't validate.

-it feels slightly cluttered (perhaps more 'disjointed' than anything else.. it might have to do with how the content length between your columns is staggered.. they eye fights for where to focus.. perhaps simplifying things a bit?

-from a layout perspective, I think the second horizontal grey bar (below the 'Leeds Web Design Studio' lettering) seems to break the flow of things.. it's not that it looks horrible... just out of place more or less.. the vertical flow of the site is broken because of it.. perhaps without it, in conjunction with less clutter, things flow smoother for the eye...

-I noticed in the left hand menu panel, the client login is at the bottom.. does this pose as a slight annoyance if the client is using a smaller resolutioned monitor and must scroll down to login? Perhaps putting the client login info on top of the 'What do you need' section.. even better would be to have an inline streamlined login field system along the top somewhere (perhaps built into the header somehow, while maintaining an attractive, non distractive look?)

 

Aside from those issues.. I do like the look of it. (just wish it performed faster).

As for those performance issues, I would encourage you to have a peek at website optimizations. Many graphics can be merged into one and loaded via CSS for example.

 

Analyzing the homepage via Firefox 3 and Firebug / Yslow, the overall performance grade is F(42).

Further examinations show that you have 76 HTTP requests.. this is heavy. I would recommend getting Yahoo's Yslow and Firebug for Firefox (you need to install firebug prior to yslow) and have a good look at how your site is performing.. you can save a lot of bandwidth and have much snappier response times for your visitors / clients. Well worth the effort upfront IMHO.

 

But again, I do like the look and feel. Very nice

 

Hope that all helps out.

 

Cheers,

 

NRG

 

 

[Fadion]

Generally I like the site. It's nice and in an slightly optimistic view, it has a nice feel. I'm saying "optimistic view" because of some things I noticed:

 

- As mentioned above, the gray horizontal rule breaks the flow. And it really breaks it a lot. I was very confused when I first entered the site, couldn't get the grip of it and understood what I was seeing only after a bit. Any light graphic could go well there and won't distract the focus so much.

- I don't like the rollover effect on the menus. It looks liked rush comparing to the general attention to detail.

- I would loose those highlights on the text in the header graphic. They distract and don't look so cool too.

- Adding to the above login suggestion...I can even barely see it. A light border on the inputs should spot them out.

 

To conclude this, I can say that the site has a nice and familiar look (in the good sense). I didn't notice slow loading times and I'm not even on a super fast connection. Just make something for the flow and focus distraction and you'll have a great site.

[atholon]

I liked the design. I didn`t care for the bar that says Leeds Web Design Studio.

 

Also I think you should use a seperator under the navigation.