My latest design endeavor. (Review?)

I started from your 3rd attempt and worked backwards.....
I have to say, my taste was the opposite of yours. I like your first
attempt the best. If your boss wants rustic, I say make it rustic
whether you like it or not. In fact, I'd like to see more wood!

I would stick to the first one too. Maybe you could try to fill with content the third one?

I have to agree with rlhurst on this. First of all, your boss loves design #1, so hey, it sounds like your work is done. But here's why I like it...

Think about what your site is promoting -- rehab and recovery. Put yourself in the mindset of someone who either personally needs that, or has someone close to them who needs that. What is the first thing you see when you visit each of your designs?

1) I see beautiful outdoors and calm animals, gives me the feeling that visiting Touchstone Ranch will get you away from it all, so I (or the other person) will be able to concentrate on recovery. Not so sure about the Louis Armstrong video but I'm guessing that's a placeholder.

2) Looks clinical to me, I see a horse in the header, but I don't know, could just be your facility's logo. I see a lot of text I need to read. This place could be a cinderblock building on a busy city street, for all I know.

3) A bit better, but I can tell I'd have the same impression as #2.

I don't think this is a business area where flashy Web 2.0 design techniques are really that important. What your business is selling is addiction recovery and you seem to have a unique setting and methodology for it. The photos sell it. The other two designs look like everyone else.

Hey Larches,

I have to agree with the previous posters - to me, it just went from bad to worse with 2 and 3

Original one looked very warm, calm.... 2nd one looked depressing in comparison (probably not the best thing for a drug/alcohol recovery center?), and the third one is just plain and boring (for my taste).

I'd go with #1....

Cheers,
Rob

Let's face it: that's not true.

You didn't 'hate' it because you are a perfectionist... (you are not the only one!), you didn't like it because your taste is different. It's that simple. :p

However, in this case your "different taste" doesn't necessarily mean a better result, sorry. You have talent and skills but your ego (and emotions) took it over and while chasing the perfection... you created two boring and soul-less design.

I'd also go back to version #1, get rid of the ugly black bg and work on it from there. Oh, and there are some beautiful pictures on the blog - use them. (And when you are done, make the site and the blog to look the same!)

Good luck!

i go with u. the third one is the best. IMO

Wow, thank you all for you input.

I felt like the first one was very cluttered, too busy and just plain harsh on the eyes. (And yes, the video is just a place holder.) Maybe if you take one more look at the third attempt now that I have a little bit of content filled in? The video will also be a video of the ranch and what it's like here.

Now I'm just unhappy, haha. I can't go back to the first one now because I've already discarded it. The second one is the one they want to use, but they have no eye for design anyways (and obviously, neither do I), and the third one (although favored by me) is no bueno, according to professional opinion.

Well... stay tuned for #4. Should be here by the end of the day. -_-

Design #1.

Use a color picker, create a color scheme using header colors (brownish...) and go from there, replace the black for something more "earth". Maybe add some greensih touches?

The first design is powerful, just needs color/contrast/earth / nature tones.

I like the 1st one, just make it more clean and tidy and that will be the best ! 2nd and 3rd just look like a regular and boring blog.

We like the first design and it wasn't hard to decide.

Definitely the first one. But have you tried the first design with a brighter background?

I like your first one and second one site ...

I can't fade any other color than black into the wood or it looks like crap. Black makes it look like the wood just fades out, but any other color look horrible.

But, I'm on to something similar to #1. I must finish by tomorrow afternoon, so we will see what happens!

Well. Let me know what you guys think.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/68...sBMYIZQ4=w1024

cant see how it could be the first one but like you say it only preference's and ultimately
its up to your boss -

i think the 2 nd one looks the best - but then not so rustic

Larches, went to look at your latest design but I get a 403 Forbidden error on your link.

hey ur first design was good !! i think improving that one would please ur boss.. replace that black background with a wooden finish .. and the raunchiness in the top degrades as we go down so maintain the same theme through out !!

Sorry, guys. Try again, now.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_W...MwMzRmNDc4ZmNm

And now my 'supervisor' says it's not ****ing good enough and that I have to go back and add a contact form, 800 number, a ****ing interactive test that people take and it tells them if they are a drug addict or not.

-_- If anyone in this thread has experience creating a website by making an image in Photoshop, chopping it up in Imageready and then editing it to be an actual web page in Dreamweaver, you would all understand my frustration. With this method you can't just go back and edit. You have to go back to the PSD, change whatever needs to be changed in the design, go back into Imageready and slice it all up again, then go to Dreamweaver and set up all the background images/color, page formatting, content, etc, allllll over again.


SO ANGRY!

image

Second attempt is pretty good looking !! than the other attempts

yes, The First site is what i would go with. But i do like the 2nd one too. but hey i mo pro at this so i am going to stick with the 1st one..

Nice job

Hey Larches,

I know i'm new here, but I've done a bit of WebDesign and i wanted to give my 2 cents.

I'm gonna stick with v10 trtc.us/10 - and v11 - trtc.us/11. Since those are you latest and most polished works from what i saw.

The header on the latest version lost allot of impact, usually when you have a number, you'll want that number to stand out.

White text on that background doesn't quite cut it for me. IMO you'll either have to increase the text a bit, or go back to something more similar to v10

Try to use no more than 2 fonts.
I personally like sans-serif for headlines and serif fonts for the body text.

There's allot more to say, but good typography and element placing takes you a long way.

Hope you won't find me too critic,

Gil

My issue is with that the white text on a different font without a background it just fades away.

And my experience with customers is that those chat buttons are nice and all, but sooner rather than later they slack a bit and rely on getting phonecalls rather than having someone on the chat standing by and ready to talk ?

Could be nice to integrate an chat is online/offline graphical element.

I see you haven't responded to my email.

Oh well, I tried.

Nice job!

You'll definitely want to put the legal stuff down in bottom footer.

Latest version is MUCH better than the original versions 2 and 3. I agree about the white text at the very top, I would just add a simple 2 pixel black Layer Styles stroke on the text, that will make it stand out more without being overpowering.

The faded out picture behind the text and video box is a bit distracting, I don't know that it adds anything. If anything, I'd like to see a horse somewhere on there. As I mentioned about the very first design you did, one of the things I liked was the incorporation of a horse photo onto the page, since the equine therapy is a focal point of this center.

Finally, your video (really nice quality, btw) makes no mention of the equine therapy, instead talking about some faith-based issues. You should make sure your marketing text and video line up with each other, or else it's going to be confusing to your potential clients.

Try Try again.
and the third one is the best. ok

Alright. I've (almost) successfully cloned the table-built site into a CSS layout. I'm having just a slight problem with positioning the text in the info-boxes. Can anyone take a look and point me in the right direction?

CSSAttempt

All I see is white text on a white screen, with a blue link menu toward the bottom of the page. Maybe your background graphic isn't uploaded?

I also like the third one.

Funny how my images folder would just disappear like that. -_-

Anyways, I got most everything all figured out. Now I'm just trying to find a way to override the CSS file for the navigation bar. See, my CSS says that links shall be blue. But my navigation bar is blue, so you can't see them. Solution?

Where would I place this code?

-I only need the links in the #navigation to be white. The rest need to stay the blue that I have defined them in CSS.