Do we have any professional website designers in here?

[Messiah Khan]

Im in need of the assistance of a professional(or non professional, but very good) website designer or graphic designer with good website knowledge. Where I work have had a new website made for cheap by a freelance website designer, and to be honest its not very good. I have been given the task of trying to save it somewhat, but my graphic design skills arn't as good as I need them to be to do it myself. So im basically needing a consultant type person to have a quick look at the site and tell me what needs to be done and roughly how much it would cost to get a professional to do it.

Cheers,
Ali:)

[Davey_Pitch]

I do some freelance web design, though admit to being a better developer than a designer. I'll happily take a look and see if there's anything obvious I can suggest for you :)

[Matblack]

icraig knows the design side iirc

MB

[Messiah Khan]

Thanks guys. If anyone wants a look and comment, then the site is;

http://www.qeliz.ac.uk/newsite/default/splash.asp

Please ignore the random test articles, sections and animated gifs etc, thats just me playing around and testing the backend and site management features as im bug testing at the moment. Which IMO is something the designer should have done, but never mind. What I want advice on is the overall look. Yes I know the purple is hideous, but its the 'corporate' colour and also the bosses favourite colour (see the link there?) So in any new design, there has to be a fair bit of that colour still in it. Also the swirly design thing in the top left corner has to be included somewhere as thats the design on the new prospectus, and the powers that be origionally wanted the website to look exactly like the paper prospectus. So any suggestions are greatly welcome.

[Haly]

Tables :eek:

[Beansprout]

Boo! :)

Looks like a 90s site :D

The overusage of the purple colour is henious, the amount of wasted space is absurd - on monitors of the type owned by most general people (so max 1280x1024, most likely less) they'll hardly be able to see the site properly - it's not concise, rendering it totally ineffective and inaccessible.

Talking of accessibility, it uses tables - not nice, clean, accessible (X)HTML/CSS - I doubt it complies with any of the accessibility standards which, for a school site, must be rather important :)

We've done a school's website before....I can PM you info if you like, and probably get a few design ideas done today/tomorrow :)

In terms of cost....'four figures' would be the kind of range....school sites end up a lot bigger and more complex than at first expected :)

[Mark]

He's so right. It doesn't fit on my 1024x768, and if the Web were around then, I would say it was more 80s (or even 70s) going by the colour scheme at any rate. :(

[Davey_Pitch]

Quick observations - far too much purple, and the use of tables. Steal the CSS books from the other thread in here and read up on using that to design the page properly.

Remember one thing, that while purple may be your boss' favourite colour, he needs to realise that it won't be the favourite colour of the majority of visitors. He needs to think beyond himself to get a site that will appear to all/the majority of visitors.

[kaiowas]

Instead of using lots of purple use mostly neutral colours with a bit of purple here and there. You'll still be able to achieve the same overall colour theme but without it being quite so overwhelming.

[Matblack]

http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/11/home1mx6.jpg

You sure this isn't the new Lemon Party website ;)

MB

[iCraig]

Too much purple. If that's the corporate colours, fine, but that doesn't mean it should be plastered over everything.

As already said, this is a new website and should be designed using today's web design methods. Tables should not be used to structure the site. There should be no styling information within the HTML, just content.

The structure, style and presentation of the site is controlled via the CSS.

As for a cleaner and less abrasive design, well, an image speaks a thousand words.

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/1652/queenit7.jpg

Ripped apart an older design of mine, needs tweaking but you get the idea. The corporate colours are promoted subtly.

[Messiah Khan]

Thanks a lot guys, this is all very usefull. Ive been bug testing the last couple of dayd and ive already filled 3 pages with faults and bits that simply don't work Im far from impressed at all tbh. I also found out from my boss how much the project cost... £1500. I suppose the old saying "you get what you pay for" is true. Oh, and the guy has taken 18 months to make the thing!:angry:




We've done a school's website before....I can PM you info if you like, and probably get a few design ideas done today/tomorrow :)

In terms of cost....'four figures' would be the kind of range....school sites end up a lot bigger and more complex than at first expected :)

That would be very welcome mate. If I can get enough comments/ideas and realistic figures and timeframes etc, then i'll take it all to my boss and possibly recoomend scrapping the whole project and get something decent made.

Icraig, could you possible redo that image without the naughty words please, so i can use that as an example of how bad our current one is. Would it also be possible to send me some links of your work?

Again, thanks a lot folks.:)

[petemc]

LOL HAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAHA OMG tell me you're kidding and thats a joke site? That was done by someone who knows NOTHING of design. The whole site feels huge and I'm at 1600x1200. The huge ass anim is pointless. The two images are just bad and no thought has been given to the readability of the words over them. As others have said tables are bad. In this day and age any designer worth their salt should be using CSS for styling of content. The HTML isn't valid either (http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.qeliz.ac.uk%2Fnewsite%2Fdefau lt%2Fsplash.asp). Its terribly in-accessible for disabled people and that should be a standard feature for an educational site. Its a legal requirement too, though its been a year or so since I was a designer so I'm not sure where things are with that.

[Beansprout]

I had a much better link but lost it when FF crashed....that said, this (http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/uk-website-legal-requirements.shtml) page gives a good overview...essentially, accessibility has been in the law for a *long* time now :)

[Messiah Khan]

LOL HAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAHA OMG tell me you're kidding and thats a joke site? That was done by someone who knows NOTHING of design. The whole site feels huge and I'm at 1600x1200. The huge ass anim is pointless. The two images are just bad and no thought has been given to the readability of the words over them. As others have said tables are bad. In this day and age any designer worth their salt should be using CSS for styling of content. The HTML isn't valid either (http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.qeliz.ac.uk%2Fnewsite%2Fdefau lt%2Fsplash.asp). Its terribly in-accessible for disabled people and that should be a standard feature for an educational site. Its a legal requirement too, though its been a year or so since I was a designer so I'm not sure where things are with that.


Fair point with the second half of the post, but as for the animation etc;


Please ignore the random test articles, sections and animated gifs etc, thats just me playing around and testing the backend and site management features as im bug testing at the moment. Which IMO is something the designer should have done, but never mind.

;)

[petemc]

Whoopsy. I didn't mean them of course. They were brilliant ;) *shoots self in foot*

[Mark]

I also found out from my boss how much the project cost... £1500. I suppose the old saying "you get what you pay for" is true. Oh, and the guy has taken 18 months to make the thing!:angry:
Obviously, I have no clue what the site maintenance is like, but if it's anything like the site itself then I'm afraid your boss has been had, plain and simple, and it's got nothing to do with getting what you pay for. Sadly there are too many people who think they can design a website when in reality pretty much all they know is dreamweaver, or, even worse, frontpage. :eek:

I'm nothing more than an amateur, but even I know to use CSS for layout, and certainly not to plaster the whole site with garish purple. :(

Good luck with getting it sorted. I've seen a few shool sites that I've been very impressed with, so it can be done. :)

[Daz]

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/1652/queenit7.jpg
If you're shy on teachers for any of those lessons I could take a couple ;):D:p

[petemc]

lol I never even saw those. If you need a photographer ;) ;) *dreams*

[Messiah Khan]

Hehe, I would if I could. Its going to be hard enough persuading the powers that be to part with more money to make a decent site. Fortunately my line manager (Who is sort of heading this project) is on my side. I nearly gave her a heart-attack today when I handed her a very heavy report including loads of bugtesting, HTML validation and web accessiblility information. I think thats convinced her that we need to get a new site, or at least rework a lot of this one.

[Tommy]

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/1652/queenit7.jpg


I thought the guy in the middle was Dr. Kelso from Scrubs.