Hi,
I am in the very beginning stages of this website design and wanted to get some opinions on the design. A little background....I went to school for graphic design and just kind of fell into website design. I LOVE color and I LOVE websites that stand out. With that being said, what do you think about this design? If you were looking for a designer, would you think I could do any style of site, or do you think I am boxing myself in and scaring away the more conservative clients? http://spoonfrogclients.com/sf/

Thank you for your time!

You do have strong graphic design skills. I envy you.

I am verbal more than visual. The best way to avoid being too narrowly 'type-cast' is to include an example page for each 'type' of page you wish to be considered for. In terms of selling your skills via a website, that is probably the only effective way to demonstrate your 'depth'.

A couple minor suggestions - always insert a title and short description to any pages you publish that are publicly displayed, particularly demo sites. Have a tab say 'Index' is such a waste of branding opportunity. If someone clicks over to another tab - that 'title' is your only shot at 'pulling them back in'. rather than closing the tab. When people get pulled away, they frequently 'sort of' lose track of what they were doing and the title is your best bet to remind them if they have opened up and browsed to another page. The description is your primary tool to control what search pages will show as a short description of your page. If someone searches for your domain name, if it has been 'scraped' by the search bot, that description (particularly if you keep it short enough to fit in their listing) is what will normally show up with your listing.

Good luck!
Gordon

Hi Gordon,

Thank you for taking the time to look at my site and write a review. Yes, I normally do add titles to my pages. I didn't this one because I was still newly working on it.

Thanks!

Hey Dawn,
I think good design is good design so minimal or colorful when done right works in my opinion. For a designer especially showing off what you can do might even be better, plus you'll have your portfolio so this looks great.

A couple of tiny things, the menu background bar looks a bit larger on the bottom for the horizontal center. The responsive panel text should be the same size that font is a tiny bit small, that and maybe drop the phone graphic a bit for whitespace to the button. Anything I do pales in comparison though so...

Gord,
First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to look at this for me. How's this now? When you mention the responsive panel text, are you referring to the text that says 'menu'? I am confused as to what you mean by the phone number. Where are you suggesting that go?

Awesome work!

I only mention the menu bar since it's such a focus, nice to have it balance on the bar with centered links, it looked a bit bottom heavy. The Responsive Designs Panel, the font that starts "Can you afford to..." is smaller than the rest that are a good readable size. You see how you have great space around the buttons (that's called whitespace) on that same panel the button is very close to the phone graphic, maybe if you add like 20px to the top of the image it would bring that graphic down a little?
Probably just me though... I have to deal with trim molding element design too much in my work, how cyma recta goes over a scotia that balances to the fascia stuff like that has got me seeing too many details.

Hi Gord,
Okie dokie, I understand now! How does this look?

http://spoonfrogclients.com/sf/

That's got it, going to be another great site makeover.

WOW! is all i got to say!

Great job on this site! One thing I could suggest is take advantage of the Out of View properties... you can really make this pop!

Steve