Corked 2.0: Personal Blog Redesign

No one has any suggestions or comments? I’d really like to hear from you guys.

Site looks great! ?? I really like the cork board. Great mouseover effects and the sidebar is wicked. Wonderful work.

-JD

nice site, theme is pretty neat, clean looking, cork board is a nice idea/look but the image in the Lost posting seems out of alignment, maybe it’s supposed to look that way it does, but … maybe not, chaeck for a div tag that isn’t closed

@jd – thanks for the comments!

@jrodgers – I’m not really sure what’s up with that image either. It’s a funky alignment issue on the image.

Any other comments/suggestions? How is load time for everyone?

Looks good, not too heavy and elements works together well. Nice work.

I would love to hire you for a top menu bar using images.. it’s obvious you know what you’re doing. Nice work.

Color, action, interactivity look great, well DONE!
One of my pet peeves is tiny type tho…
I’m 49 and aint gettin any younger
(using FF on OS X 10)

@vrungel: thank you!

@kamitty: thanks for the praise.

@davebyers: what text do you find too small? All text is at browser normal with smaller fonts, for the most part, at 85% browser normal. thank you for your comments!

I love the search tab at the top. Very clever.

The Design and About tabs shift a pixel or two for me on the mouseover, but the other two are fine. Not sure why that is.

The only criticism I have (you’ll hate me for saying this) is that your side bar seems a little wide. When I scroll down on the site, I’m very aware of there being a big empty space on the right. Maybe you could put more content in the sidebar or make it less wide.

Overall, very nice job. You’re the reason mediocre designers like myself work in manufacturing plants instead of design firms.

@u6crash: Thanks. Regarding the sidebar width, it does seem a bit wide on the main page. You’re right that it looks like it’s missing something. Problem is that shrinking it would take the notecard out of proportion to the paper, and I want to try and keep it all in line. I am, once I get a bit more time, going to try and add a bit to the front page sidebar to try and fill the space. I want it to all follow the theme so it’s not going to be easy, but something like a calendar would look nice I think. We’ll see how it goes.

I concur with u6crash about the empty corkboard as you scroll down.
Maybe showing fewer posts or appending them would help.
… or filling the sidebar with other random stuff.

I also like the search function, but it isn’t obvious. I’d add the words “Click here to” in the field.

Finally.. and this is a bit niggly… I love the bulletin board thing you have going, but the embossed rad looking header doesn’t seem to logically go with it. I can get my head around the plaster textured wall that he cork board is on, but I would probably go with some other graphic that would be on the same wall as a cork board, i.e. marker writing, or a note pasted up with masking tape or something. What you have is a cool effect, but to me, it just doesn’t match the rest of the effort.

@rspence: Thanks for the search button comments, I’ve modified the search text to read “Click to Search.”

As for the title image, I can see where you’re coming from. My goal was to find a font that looked like the plaster on the wall was chipped out leaving the text in a lighter, former wall color. It’s another thing that probably could be improved once I get some time. I tried a few other ideas, like the sticky note, and they just didn’t look right above the cork board. Why would someone stick something to the wall above a cork board? So that’s why I went with the chipped plaster idea. Like the sidebar, once I get some more time to play with the design I’ll work on the title graphic. But thank you for your critique and I don’t find it “niggly” by any means!

You may want to try to add a list of categories or tags on the main page. That will add to it. If you make the calendar look like it would on a cork board, that would look amazing too. ??

-JD