Topic: Work In Progress

[roopurt18]

I'm doing a redesign of my dojo's website.

Here is the original:
http://www.japankaratedofed.com/

Here is my current work in progress.
http://www.rbredlau.com/test/jkf/

Right now I'm interested in thoughts and opinions on the color scheme.

Also I was thinking a background image might make it nicer, either something tiled or maybe a gray-scale image of Japan or something.

(Yah I'm aware the body needs some padding, no need to comment on that.)

[AndyB]

I'm puzzled by what looks like a fuzzy bathroom mat as the content background.  Is that significant?  Mind you, I don't understand the significance of the lightning bolt on the 'original' site either, so maybe I need sleep more than I think.

[roopurt18]

Oh, for the record, I didn't have anything to do with the original.  I'll wait for some more replies before I say anything more; I don't want to seed my feed back!

[Northern Flame]

you might also want to center the body vertically so its
centered in the page. That'd make it look better.

[rcorlew]

I would have to agree that centering vertically, or at least adding some padding up top would make it more familiar for users.

As a user you browse the web you get used to designers doing something a certain way, but as a designer  you try to break out of the norm to stand out a little. Personally, I prefer about 10px padding at the top to break the page away from the "browser" environment, then you can have a little more freedom as the user is more open to new things when they don't see this as a web page.

But that's my opinion, do with it what you will.

[tibberous]

It looks hairy =) Thats not really a good thing... just... unique.

[s0c0]

Ideas:

As other have said push the main content area or the "mat" if you prefer down from the top.

Add padding to your text, its to close to the outside of the "mat" add like a 10px padding all the way around. 

Play around with different fonts I don't like the one you are using but that could just be me.  Font choice is very important in web design.

In Safari and FireFox the content is centered, but in IE7 it is not it goes over to the left.

Get rid of the underline on your " Welcome To The Japan Karate-Do Federation"

I like the "mat" and the logo, but not that "Japan Karatedo Federation" image, again try some different fonts and this site could look pretty good.

Also put in a doctype, if you don't know what that is then google it and invest 5-10 minutes of your time learning what it is.  You are using CSS...good.  Use what ever doctype you prefer a lot of zealot bitch asses think you HAVE to use XHTML.  I use it just because I'm tired of the bitch ass web designers complaining to me.  But in the end they are retarted since 99.999 percent of your users will never look at the HTML code, so who gives a a flying *explicit*

[jcombs_31]

It does somewhat looks like grass (possibly because is the photoshop grass brush?).  I think you definitely need to add some padding around the text. I don't really like the bevel in the logo type.  I don't think you have to bring the top down to create a margin, but I usually do this if I know the bottom is not going to stretch the page.  It just makes it more balanced.