Review for Michelle of intothelouvre.org

Layout

A Christmas layout, nice: I can never manage to make one to in time. If I do, it ends up staying till July. Some of the colors you used are too light. Like the light gray writing at the bottom. It’s fine as background, it creates a really subtle transition, but as text color it’s almost impossible to read. The graphic itself, looks really cute and fetching at a superfluous glance. Nevertheless, once I looked more attentively, I noticed that it’s of rather poor quality.

The snowman and the birds are very nice as far as art goes. Did you make them yourself? Most unfortunately the birds have terribly jagged edges. I’m not sure if you were just rushing, or just over optimized the pictures. Be as it may, the layout looks cute from a superficial view, but rather sloppy when I actually stop to look at individual details.

There are a lot of jagged edges on all figures, it almost looks as if you had resized most of the images and lost quite a bit of the quality. On the snowman’s hat, where the green meets the black, it’s especially noticeable. The curvy lines at the top are not smooth at all, and this is quite obvious even for a regular visitor. The backs of the birds are also quite jagged.

There are some very well done portions on your design, like the bottom of the snowman. I really like the play of shadows and the natural transition to the white from the light blue, on the header. The right part, does still have a few jagged edges .

I’m not entirely fond of the way you separated the content area from the main background. On the one hand the thick white background is a good idea, however it looks rather odd starting only below the header. I believe it would have been a better idea to have a border around the header as well. I quite dislike the top left, respectively right, corner of the layout. It looks as if you’ve been hastily cut it, and the changing colors creates an additional sloppy look to it: as if your line had slipped while drawing.

I almost didn’t notice that you had a site title. It’s impossible to read. At least have a thin darker border around it. Your navigation is not exactly hidden, but it could do with a bit more contrast. Maybe if you had a horizontal stripe starting on the right of the snowman, which could serve as background for the main menu, things would be easier to notice. I’d also suggest capitalizing all letters, rather than not capitalizing any of them. This is the main navigation after all. It’s supposed to be emphasized.

The footer, as an idea is a good one, but the very light gray background is all but unnoticeable. First of all, make the footer span for the entire width of the layout (thick border included). Second, make the bottom darker gray larger. It’s really well done, but the way it’s crumpled there, it looks as if you had decided to throw it in as an afterthought. Regarding the display of the information, why do external links precede internal ones? You should consider using two columns. The description for the external links are great in a links page, but not in the footer. In most cases the site’s title is self explanatory, and if not you can always use tooltips.

All in all, your layout is based on a good idea, but badly executed. You really should pay more attention to the quality of images you publish. No need to go overboard with the optimization.

Content

=Index=

You scared me there. For a moment I thought you were accusing me of not finishing this review sooner … not that I have a valid excuse, but I don’t like being scolded regardless. Your latest entry as of right now (Time) is truly touching. It makes me think of all the things I never asked my own grandma. Now it’s too late.

Your footer here is quite irrelevant, for the most part. The only thing remotely relating to your site is the Archives link. The rest are external links. It’s fine if you think that they are relevant. Still, why are there three times as many external links, as internal ones?

=About=

Your first sentence… well phrase is:

If you weren’t already aware, you’re currently viewing the website of a 23 year-old literary-loving college graduate who enjoys writing, thinking of art projects that never seem to span out, riding trains, long walks by the poolside, watching her boyfriend browse websites on a desktop computer, kidnapping small children using the clever cover-up of an ice cream truck driver, stealing and eating cookies, making long unnecessary run-on sentences, correcting your grammar, and gummy worms.

Run on sentence tendency or not, that is much too long. Also literary-loving? How about literature loving?

She lives in the Commonwealth of Virginia but some day dreams of residing in Maryland; however, her second favorite part of life is the independent bookstore job she uses as an excuse to collect more books.

The word however suggests that you’re going to contradict the previous statement. What does dreaming of residing in Maryland have to do with your job? If you’re running an independent bookstore I’m assuming you could do this just as well from Maryland.

I love reading about pages: I really do, but your sentences just go on and on … and on… Yes, sure it may sound humorous to do it once, but on the whole page? One of thing I despise most in self description pages are lists. Now if they are in list format (i.e. using <ul> or <ol> tags), I can at least skip them… If you insist on putting them at the same place as the rest of the text, you lost me. I’m your reviewer alright, and by definition should posses a higher attention span than most visitors. My patience is not infinite, though.

Her passion for other artistic endeavors did not form until she reached college age, and were not enhanced until she found a job that would pay for supplies.

was not enhanced, because it refers to “her passion”. I think so, at any rate, unless you left something out.

The bottom part says “15 Things”, followed by three links. Hovering over the links I see that they’re also part of the about section. Still why 15? Even if I count the fact that the second link has 16 in parenthesis, it’s still 18 things, not 15. The “Books and Reading” page I found very entertaining, of course the poor organization is still present. I’d suggest you make use of a definition list instead of an ordered list. Have a brief and eye catching heading and then proceed to detail this liking. It will make reading much easier.

Book Lust can arguably be considered a self explanatory title, however for nitpickers like yours truly, I suggest you also add a clearer description. Something like: “must read books”, for example.

The 15 Things I Love is so far the best page. I normally don’t much care about reading pages dedicated to significant others, but you do manage to input just enough humor to make it interesting. You still have a few very long and intricate sentences. I do get the appeal of these side notes, as I used to have a lot of them myself, however most reader will get rather confused by them. Try to shorten your sentences and make them more concise. It’s easier to keep your audience interested, that way.

=Art=

Keeping my own skills in mind, I consider it rather hypocritical to criticize, but I’m also very good at ignoring unpleasant things, so I’ll do it anyway. So just take these as a sort of personal remark, not necessarily constructive suggestions of a reviewer. Aside that, I’m not particularly fond of pixel art, because well… pixel seem very messy to me. That being said, your Old Pixels page is exactly like that: full of pixels. I prefer the smooth drawings better, where I can’t see the transition from one line to another. The Pixel College ones are so much better, but they still have that slightly “jagged look”, just like the graphics on your layout. As for the new pixels: OH MY GOD! I’m stealing that mouse in the cup. RIGHT. THIS. INSTANT! It’s simply gorgeous. The rest, is still sporting the jagged edges which are a rather big turn off for me.

The livejournal icons are boring. Sure this is much better than those crappy celebrity photos, where the face has been cropped out and pasted on a neon colored background, but it’s still unoriginal. Plus, the artwork is not yours. Your Paint Shop Pro illustrations have a lot of potential, but the lack of detailed shading takes away a lot of realism. Then again, if this was your intent, feel free to disregard my comments. I’m partial to very organized and realist art.

Some of your past layouts, have really lovely header images, however the bulky layout structure unfortunately takes away a lot from their potential. Aside this, on closer inspection, some images lack sufficient detail, or a little bit of fine tuning, to give them a clean cut look. The general impression these designs give me is that of frustration. You have the ability to do some really amazing work, but you stop trying hard enough while only half way finished. If only I could do that… and have nicer layouts…

As a side note, whenever I hover over a picture in this category, everything underneath it seems to shits a few pixels. This is likely due to the light gray border which you have there on hover. First of all, the border is barely visible so choose a somewhat darker shade. Second, when not hovered on, you need to specify a white border (same size as the gray one), as as the annoying shifting effect won’t occur.

I really love the Aztec monument and the Japanese Gate in your Traditional art page. The rest of your work seems rather different, with seemingly very little effort put on it. This is most noticeable in coloring and shading details. Your book designs are very nice though, especially the Afterwords Cafe. I’d definitely buy a book life that… provided I didn’t hate poetry so much.

=Fiction=

These are definitely an intriguing read, which I’ll probably visit later on. It is of course somewhat noticeable that they are drafts (faulty punctuation and some odd expressions), nevertheless I’m happy to see that they are not using run on sentences. My only suggestion is that some parts be switched. Sometimes very long descriptions after an intriguing dialogs can be frustrating. So try to keep a sort of balance between the two. I’m referring to the texts which have both.

=Articles=

The article on how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches truly amused me. I loved that you put large images and made precise directions. I like the tutorial on how to make stars. I’ll have come back before Christmas for these. They’ll definitely come in handy, and probably be cheaper than buying it. Some of the pictures are really blurry though. Either consider uploading larger ones, or maybe lower their size, to minimize the bad quality. The last image here is a very well taken one. Great effect, you should maybe put one of those at the start, so as to entice people with the end result.

Your web tutorials are very well written and most interesting, something I’m unlikely to find these days. I would suggest having more pictures to exemplify things, to make them better. For example, in the first part where you discuss layout width and positioning, a visual representation can be most helpful.

Your book reviews are truly amazing. I don’t much like reading anything other than website reviews, because I become easily bored. And even in website reviews, my attention span is not very long lately. But these book reviews are quite engaging. I shall definitely come back later to read more.

Coding

I’ve checked some 2 pages for validation and they all passed. Looking at your coding, it is clean, well spaced and indented. The only thing I’d object about is your main navigation which would be more suitable as a horizontal list: Tutorialtastic’s Horizontal CSS Block Navigation article can help you out, should you need it.

Rating

On the whole, I wasn’t very impressed by your site, but I can see that it’s a good site. This is why I have given you higher than half of the rating. What I would suggest for improvement (without forfeiting your personal style) is more attention to detail as far as your layout and other graphics go.You seem quite capable of creating nice artwork, but you also need the necessary patience to fiddle with them till they look alright.

Another thing I noticed, is your tendency to make your layout structure somehow fit into a rectangle. This is not bad, after all there is a reason for most websites to use this shape. Most of your artwork, however, is not making use of a fixed shape. It’s unique and free. By trying to “trap” it inside rigid forms, you’re taking away from its appeal.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Reviews Vera. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.