WIP Website - Hodmimir Studios

[Evil Ash]

This is my first mockup of my pretend production company/studios/art house/whatever showcase.

http://www.hodmimirstudios.com/main.html

Bigger logo here too: http://www.hodmimirstudios.com/

Comments on the design, logo, etc.

The name is derived from Norse, which was the theme of the first movie I ever made (Helheim, I think I showed it to you guys). It's the name of the eternal forest/life tree/Yggdrasil (cannot be destoryed) which is symbolic of all art, in a way.

Anyways the theme and logo are thus forest themed, but I tried not to make it TOO mythical, but I don't know.

What do you guys think?

And no, I am not going to incorporate any sort of flash elements. I don't like them.

Also if any of the elements don't seem to work out or etc. let me know what your resolution and browser are. I tested it myself a lot, so it should show up as long as your resolution isn't archaic.

[Slime]

the red text on black background at the bottom had me strain my eyes to see, still couldnt read so i highlighted it

even though its meant to be out of the way it should probably be readable

otherwise looks cool. i dont really know anything about web design stuff to give a good comment though.

[Breed]

It's very dark. Makes me think that you primarily make horror movies or something similar? That's my gut instinct anyway. Take that however you want it I guess!

I agree with Lohr about the red text, it's a bit hard to read.

On the whole it looks simple and decent I'd say

[Evil Ash]

Haha I forgot about the red text at the bottom honestly. Yeah it is definitely hard to read.

I am definitely more inclined to the darker side of things. Most of my stuff has been fantasy/horror and burlesque shows.

I really just enjoy dark web sites.

I kind of used http://www.lionsgate.com/ as a basis, for the general layout.

[Kevitus]

I don't know but you should thoroughly consider if the color black represents your project, as going for black has usually a big impact on how the user will perceive your messages. If you want that dark mystery horror movie image, than you're quite safe to go, but if not, you should look into making something more bright.

I'm unsure if I like the sprites for the borders, it looks a bit 2003esque where it was cool to use sprites for everything. Maybe it would make sense to work without them and using different shades of black to seperate your sites sections. For the site wrapper you might go with just the greenish box-shadow but stronger and then work with 80%-90% dark for the wrapper background.

Also your resized logo at the top is a bit wide and there seem to be some aliasing issues for the "HODMIMIR" part. I think it would be better if you put the studios under the hodmimir right next to the trees. Personally I wouldn't pick an all majascule serif typeface for the most important text of your logo. The resulting busy and rectangular lettering makes it hard to read and remember, especially using this unusual name.

The site width looks a bit narrow to me, try going for something standardized like 960px, 980px or even a responsive layout. But this is also quite dependent on what content you want to fill your site with.

Using sprites for buttons is nowadays pretty obsolete as CSS3 gives you decent possibilities to render your text with drop shadow or gradients as well and you have full control of that. I'd recommend you going for html buttons with sprites as background image, if you really want to keep it that way.

Pay attention to margins and paddings, your footer text is hitting the site
border which looks unprofessional. Also as already said, the red is too dark.

I hope this helped!

[Evil Ash]

Thanks Kevitus, really useful advice.

I think I'm going to stick with the black, as it does really represent what I want to do. And for the record my "services" are not things like wedding videos or etc. so I'm not afraid of scaring away that kind of crowd.

The sprites are kind of just what I know. I make my site in Photoshop and break it down into tables and make it a website. I don't know much site code beyond a bit of PHP and of course basic HTML. I'll research more into CSS3 and what more modern site are using.

I agree about the narrow site, I think its 896 right now. I tried to figure out my layout for the internal sections ahead of time and I really didn't want a lot of content, so I figured the spacing would be fine - however it is easy to change down the road.

Thanks for the comment on the logo. It's really what I've been trying to perfect. The resize was done in Photoshop and not rendered so it aliased a bit and I even think I quickly ran a sharpen on it - so yeah not 100%. Here's past iterations (college and short film projects):



(I can't find a high res version of this one, but you get the idea)


And here's my old odesign (about 2007):
http://www.hodmimirstudios.com/uploads/oldsite/

I'll play around with the font and the layout of the words, see if I can find something I like more than what it is now.

Again with the buttons, I know Photoshop way more than I know code, so that's why it is designed as such - but I'll do a bit of research and see what I can create in the site code itself and etc.

And yeah I forgot I put the text in the bottom section entirely, so it is not done or where it is going to be.

Thanks.

[Bobby Swisha]

black backgrounds are so passe

[Slime]

i definitely agree with kevitus on the 2003 vibe of both the buttons and the borders. i didnt write that in my 1st post because i didnt have an alternative to suggest. maybe the wood borders could look OK but mixed with the horizontal borders that aren't the same color and look kinda low-quality compared to the vertical ones, it just doesn't look right.

[Slime]

also if i could make every website i visit have a black background, i would. i wish black was the standard :/

[Dominator Dan]

i like the vertical wood borders, and yeah maybe they'd work better if the horizontal ones were of the same appearance. though i wonder if it's the green glow outside of the borders that's making it seem a bit dated, maybe it's just a case of playing around with the outside graphics a bit so it merges better colour-wise with the borders

ermmm, as for the logo, it's lookin good! i can appreciate that you may have put that fourth little tree further in to help merge the trees in with the text, but that little one does seem a bit lost behind the font.

i probably could have made more sense, i'll revisit later if i think of anything else to recommend

[Evil Ash]

I took the above advice and kind of tossed it around a bit.

I did this:
http://hodmimirstudios.com/main2.html

I'm not keen on the green glow to separate the sections, but I like having the boarders not quite as detailed. I like the bar across the top though maybe a bit thick...

I don't know, toying with ideas here.
Also threw in some quick example content.

[Liam Brocklehurst]

To me, it's so weird and confusing to see such a dark site like this nowadays...
If it had some sort of divider like http://justinshattuck.com/ or http://www.glingglo.net/

But it could just be execution! I ended up searching through some dark websites for your inspiration...
http://www.merixstudio.pl/
http://www.emblematiq.com/
http://zindustry.com/
http://pizzaluce.com/employment/

[Rabid Dinosaur]

I don't browse full-screen, so the menu gets chopped in half for me. Not like, I have to scroll, because I'm used to that obviously, but it starts a new line in the middle.

[Evil Ash]

Hmmn yes I was concerned about that, with the sprites. I'll have to play with different sizes.

Thanks for the site links Liam, I'll research around and hit the drawing board again.

[Evil Ash]

http://www.hodmimirstudios.com/main2.html

I kept pretty similar, I'm fond of the look.
I've DIV'd out some items so you shouldn't have any resize issues Rabid.
I'm pretty content with this as it is, but let me know what you guys think.

Thanks.

[Bjorny]

also you should really work with typography, font selection for titles and paragraphs as well as line height and spacing is extremely important

[Evil Ash]

Pff, nobody's gonna read this shit anyways (thank you for the good advice).