Simple Design
Posted July 13th, 2004 @ 05:45pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Completely having failed to find any inspirational shooting range websites (or bowling alley sites, which I figured would be similar in content and presentation), I've struck out on my own and created a pair of mockups for the Palm Beach Shooting Center. A plain text Web site would be better than their existing one, so, I can't do any worse, but I encourage feedback and criticism:
The .psd, should you wish to submit feedback or ideas by mucking around and sending the file back to me, is available at this location (3.3 MB, and if you're reading this page at some point after July 20, 2004, it most likely will have been deleted).
I'm shooting (pun intended) to get this mockup done by Friday. No work will be used without permission (and, depending on the terms, some form of payment or acknowledgement). Comments will be used free of charge. 🙂
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Posted 13 Jul 2004 at 6:02pm #
Wow, those are really nice, Erik! A HELLLLLL of a lot better than Cy-frigg-an! Yikes.
Posted 13 Jul 2004 at 6:10pm #
I really the target banner in mockup 2. Nice idea to actually scan a used target. What if you used the same scan and create a rollover map so that wherever there's a bullet hole, javascript menus will pop out and you can go to some other part of the website by clicking on the different bullet holes?
Posted 13 Jul 2004 at 6:59pm #
Maybe I'm too much of a minimalist, but I don't see whats awful about the original. I mean, its not spectacular or anything, but it serves its purpose pretty damn well I'd say... Whats a whole lot of flashy graphics and complicated tables going to do exactly? I understand the idea of 'looks good -> want to go there' but, as far as I'm concerned, 'has a web page -> good enough to go there'
Posted 13 Jul 2004 at 7:38pm #
Why do you assume he will use complicated tables? It's the 21st century, we have tools to make beautiful web site layouts like this with dead simple markup.
About the mockups, I prefer the second one. It says more "shooting centre" whereas the first one suggests "the next generation FPS game" to me. 🙂
Posted 13 Jul 2004 at 7:57pm #
True true. Let me rephrase then, with "complicated tables or CSS."
Posted 13 Jul 2004 at 7:59pm #
They're both very good, but I prefer the 2nd. mockup.
The real site just hurt my eyes...
Posted 14 Jul 2004 at 9:30am #
I was about to say that I liked mockup 1 best, until I saw Olivers comment (and "the next generation FPS game") - it looks cooler, but says less about the site.
Anyway, a few personal opinions about it (specifically mockup 2):
While the grey background looks great, I cannot say the same about the light grey at the right side. But then again, I've never really liked grey.. I think some kind of light colored background would work great behind that text.
I'm not particularily fond of the yellow/greenish color either, but I suppose you use it because you like it.
As for the "don't know what to do here": Why do anything at all? The content will fill it up, won't it?
"Palm Beach Shooting Center" (at the very top) could be more readable. It hurts my eyes slightly, anyway (might just be the color again).
Just a couple of comments/ideas, use them/ignore them as you feel like 🙂