As the initial designer of this new look, I guess I should chip in.
GizmoHB wrote:Overall the site is terrible right now, it feels like a cheap blog template (rapidweaver, wordpress, blogger etc) that was edited to fit the old projectmagma sites content and screwing it up while doing so, im kinda dissapointed to be honest, magma is a creative bunch of people, and im sure something better could have been made. its a boring site graphic wise 2, this simply isnt an improvent over the old site. I guess thats my opinion so I'll leave it at that and focus on other stuff...
First, I only ever designed this for the What is Myth page. A complete overhaul of the rest of the site was on the books but it hasn't been a priority for me of late. That's why CIK and StoneCold decided to go ahead and just use the design as a template, though they never consulted with anyone about it first. Anyway, I am responsible for some of your complaints so here goes.
Logo:
come on! its huge! scale it down, the logo is not the important feature of the website, it is the content and the site's purpose that should be emphasized. The logo should not dominate the page, but instead work subtly to help to lend gravity, interest, and context to the content and the site's purpose.
I don't know if you remember the old one but it was about 3 times as big. A logo is important for lending brand to a site, and frankly, this one is pretty inoffensive compared to most of the garish monstrosities out there. Besides, 84 pixels is really not all that much... That said, you're entitled to your opinion :)
Eye flow and layout:
this is the main problem, its just awful to look at, since most of us read from left to right, top to bottom, we tend to look top left first, this means the logo position is correct (its still huge), from there on the eye moves to the right....I'll just take a screenshot and draw on it...all this typing...
OK this is a valid concern but I think your image is a little misleading. There's been research to prove that when visiting a site, people's ayes will jump straight to the main content and work their way down, skimming in here and there:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html
The separation of the navigation element is actually a useful visual cue to say 'This is separate from the main content and has it's own purpose, you can ignore it if you want, but here it is in case you need it.' If the navigation was too close to content, it would be in danger of blending in too much and becoming more difficult to locate when you needed it.
A key element of design is contrast. It should be used effectively and in tandem with structure to differentiate separate sections of a page.
Text Alignment / Spacing:
lots of stuff wrong here also, the smaller the text the smaller the spacing between paragraphs...right now every break is different, which makes the page hard to read. The content seems scattered around the page, the structure is gone.
Totally agree here but I think it's not a universal problem. The downloads, projects and about pages need work, but my original stylesheet caters for general body text. This is just a by-product of the repurposing.
Content:
The sites content is pretty boring, since its a site about a game, Id expect more things related to the game, right now its text only, which isnt a real good presentation form for a game I guess. the only page worth looking at is the "what is myth?" page, which uses screenshots, different colored collumns/boxes, and other graphical elements to make it more appealing.
Yeah, that's an issue, and certainly something can be done for the static pages, but for the news pages, it's sometimes difficult to find relevent graphics for every story.
anyway, hope this helps somebody, if not atleast I got to let it out...
...Giz
Thanks Giz, I appreciate the comments, hopefully they'll inspire something to be done, but I doubt it will happen any time soon. Maybe I'll get the chance to have another crack at it one day, but that's also pretty unlikely. Take care,
- James
