Experienced design criticism.

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geekcognito

geekcognito

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Nov 19, 2006
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Atlanta, GA
I'm no designer. Or coder. I'm a writer. But people that know me know that I "do stuff on the internet" so I get all kinds of goofy requests from "Can you build me a MySpace layout?" to "I spilled beer on my computer. Can you fix it?"

Anyway, a friend of mine wants to advertise her photography services online. I did some research and I can certainly get her some exposure. However, my offer quickly turned into designing a website for her. Sigh.

Well, I had never before used Joomla, but I figured I'd give it a try. I added a basic and clean free template and some nifty components that show off her photos to give her what I believe is a clean layout.

My question for some experienced designers out there is:
  • What is your overall impression? Good? Bad? Ugly?
  • What would you add to make it less simple and more appealing?
  • Other than watermarking them (which we are doing) how can I keep people from stealing her images? A transparent .gif image over the entire page? Anyone got a link to a tutorial or program that does this?
  • Finally, not bad for a first try at this, eh? :D
Keep in mind, I still have to do a lot of on-page SEO so I'm not worried about that right now. Just the design. Her site:

LowCountry Focus Photography - Home

Thanks for the input, guys.
 


I think that's a pretty good design for a non-designer. I don't know if i like the font in the header though.

And is a transparent gif over the entire page what people are doing to stop people from stealing images?
 
I happen to agree about the font, but she likes that so what can I do? :)

I thought I read something about putting transparent images over the "real" images so when people right click and "Save As" they only save the transparent image. I may be wrong, though. Do you suggest another measure?
 
You can try that, but smart people will just back up to the gallery page and right click and do save link as with your current setup. Flash is a good way to keep people from stealing. You might as well disable right click to keep the dumb ones from doing it.

As for the header.......... I see two problems with it.

1. the dog should be moved further to the left so that the photo has more impact. Your covering what's really the cool photo part of the photo.

2. Loose the font and lose the orange. It looks to Halloweenish. Try something classier that matches the rest of the site. Try some writing the same color as the background with a white outline maybe.
 
If they want to steal the images, they will steal them..printscreen and such.

I'm no designer, but it looks good. Remember that what non-techy people vs techy people find as good design varies widely, vis a vi the ugly adsense page theory and landing page.
 
smash said:
You can try that, but smart people will just back up to the gallery page and right click and do save link as with your current setup. Flash is a good way to keep people from stealing.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know. But me messing with flash is akin to a drunken monkey operating a jet airliner.


smash said:
You might as well disable right click to keep the dumb ones from doing it.
Click to expand...

Any tips for how to do this? I'll Google to see what I find, but I'd appreciate any quick tips as well.

smash said:
As for the header.......... I see two problems with it.

1. the dog should be moved further to the left so that the photo has more impact. Your covering what's really the cool photo part of the photo.

2. Loose the font and lose the orange. It looks to Halloweenish. Try something classier that matches the rest of the site. Try some writing the same color as the background with a white outline maybe.
Click to expand...

She loves the font and the header. But I may mock up some alternatives to see what I get. Thanks for your help, bro.
 
Well, I had made a deal with a guy on here that is good with Flash, but the Flash template that she picked out was formatted in such a way that all images would have had to be cropped to fit into the viewer. Artists, as it turns out, are finicky about that shit. :D After that, I just told her I'd see what I could do with Joomla and to never ask me to develop a website again. Ever.

Thanks for the help.
 
Looks nice and clean - great for showing photos.

One thing I'd do though is try and crop all the thumbs to be the same size... you know like 100px x 100px or something - that will make it look better on the gallery pages - but then thats just me being in anal designer mode :)
 
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