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[J-cob9000]

Disclaimer: I'm not really sure where to put this at all. Don't kill me please.

So I was thinking a while back about making a little bit of money. I was also thinking that since I'm underage for an actual job I might try to do something on the internets. The thing is, the only that I could sell and am halfway good at is web design. Even that I'm not all that great but someone looking for a quick, cheap website might pay for it.
So, QC people, I ask you of you, am I good enough to sell my work? Examples below.

http://www.midnight-umbreon.net/ - This layout has no images at all minus the top banner thing. It was mostly an experiment in using no images and it turned out all right.

http://midnight-umbreon.net/other/layout.png - This was done for a friend in the Pokemon community. It's too wide for most screens but I like the way it turned out.

http://midnight-umbreon.net/other/cam.png - Done for a friend named Cameron Neal just because I told him to assign me a company to do a website for and a basis for the design. He told me a fake company and he wanted it square and blue. So that's what I did.

This isn't all of my design things but they are the ones that I could find.
So tell me.
To suck to sell or no? If I did sell them, they would be incredibly cheap.

[Lines]

Computers and Videogames or Arts and Crafts would be better for this topic.

[J-cob9000]

Oh.
You're right. I didn't really think of that.

[Spluff]

Honestly, they are very amateur looking. It's not a bad start, but not really something you could sell.

The main problem with your websites is how all the margins and features vary - which is the main reason it smacks of beginners work. Uniform gaps and borders will go a long way to making your websites more credible.

Another thing you should work on is using a more subtle color scheme - you seem to have a habit of picking out way too saturated colors. The first one is the best, because the colors have been toned down a little, but the second two seem almost to just be prime colors, which really assaults the eye, and that's not even taking into account the really strong contrast with the black/white regions.

[Melodic]

As it is, not sellable. The posts above say better than I can what you need to work on, but for now don't expect any commission.

[J-cob9000]

Wow, I never even think about margins and stuff.
Thanks for all the crit, I'll work on it.
Jens, I love you.


"smacks of beginners work" - Why do I giggle so much at this phrase?

[ampersandwitch]

I was hamhandedly sucking up to Jens before it was popular.

[J-cob9000]

Well.
All the cool kids are doing it.

[Catfish_Man]

I have a weird tendency to try to improve any css I see. This is 55 lines instead of 73, and I think a little easier to work with, mostly due to using inheritance.

Code: [Select]

body {
color: #FFFFFF;
font-family: tahoma, verdana, arial, times new roman;
font-size: 11px;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
text-decoration: none;
margin: 0;
}

#header {
background-color: #660000;
font-size: 50px;
height: 91px;
border-bottom: 2px #FFFFFF solid;
}

#headerlinks {
background-color: #8e4343;
border: 1px #FFFFFF solid;
font-size: 11px;
position: absolute;
left: 100px;
top: 78px;
padding: 2px 4px;
letter-spacing: 4px;
}

#content {
background-color: #343434;
width: 99.9%;
height: 100%;
}

a:link, a:active, a:visited {
color: #FFFFFF;
text-decoration: none;
}

a:hover {
text-decoration: underline;
}

#content a:hover {
color: #666666;
}

#header a {
font-size: 15px;
}

.content {
padding: 5px;
line-height: 1.5em;
}


[dennis]

Frankly, not bad for someone who isn't old enough to officially get a job. You could probably get paid designing blog templates and hobby sites for your peers, but the days of clueless companies hiring kids to design/build their websites are long gone.

I'm not a designer, but I do web development for a living. I get handed a finished design and implement it. The worst designs are made by print designers. They don't know the medium. My advice is to concentrate on learning how to design for the web. Form follows function.

Learn web standards and best practices. Design for XHTML 1.0. Learn how to modify Wordpress, Drupal, and Myspace templates. Learn the quirks and bugs of Internet Explorers 6, 7 and 8. Remember that the only font/typeface choice you have is serif or sans-serif. Learn how to use color profiles. Learn wireframing and design grids.

It sounds like a lot, but it's all interrelated. If I had to boil it down, remember that as a designer, someone, maybe you, will have to actually build your design, so if you design with that in mind, you will waste less time compromising the build or design later on.

[pwhodges]

WHS.

Visually, not a bad start; but the devil is in the detail.  When the designs get any more elaborate, you will be amazed how hard it is to make them work equally well in all browsers - this is where a significant amount of a web professional's effort goes. It's even a fair bit of effort to get a system set up so that you can test IE 6, 7, and 8, let alone Mac and Linux browsers

But don't be put off - there's lots of help available, and many commercial sites no better than yours.  Just aim to be a bit better each time and you'll be fine.

[J-cob9000]

WHS.

Washington Headquarters Service?

And the details, now that you've all mentioned them I notice them and see how awful they are. I will pay attention to them in the future.

Now, someone give me a commission. Make up a company or something and give me a basic design and I will try my best to create it and code it for you. I need some practices.

EDIT: and perhaps a catchy slogan, too. "Client focused. Results oriented."

[J-cob9000]

Bob Creary,
Thank you for your business offer. I'll get started on it as soon as possible. I will get back to you when I've made some progress.

Thank you,
Name of Web Design Place Thing
Jacob Singleton

[Melodic]

[jmrz]

I pretty much agree with everything that has been said so far. I also like the first site best, as it seems to have a more unified design and the colour scheme is pretty good.

You do appear to have an eye for colours, which will help you out immensely when people say they don't know what they want.

I'd suggest that you practice as much as possible. Mess around with templates and things and see what you can come up with. What program are you using? A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor such as Dreamweaver? Or are you using just a text editor and coding it all from hand? I am doing Graphic Design at uni and I had to make websites using both.

This is one I did using Dreamweaver: http://jmrz.net/uni/cmns1000/uncannyvalley/
And this is one I coded from scratch in a text editor (had to be less than 100kb in total, and hand coded, no Dreamweaver or anything, in just plain html): http://jmrz.net/uni/desn1300/atraband/

This was the first time I'd used Dreamweaver, or written anything in HTML (you know, except for the commands forums and stuff use) and I was pretty proud of my efforts. I'd suggest going through the tutorials that Jeans suggested and learning some photoshop/illustrator tricks as well as basic html and css. The best way to get better at this stuff is to keep doing it.

Also, I found scribbling down your ideas, with pen and paper, helps immensely. Don't just jump straight into coding it first. Plan it out on paper, it helps.

[Ladybug]

I want to really urge you to do coding by hand, if you don't already (looks like the first website is written by hand, though, so I guess this might be unnecessary). WYSIWYG-editors will more often than not leave you with utterly horrible code, and hand-coding will also make finding bugs and fixing irregularities in browsers much easier, since the code will (if written correctly) be more concise, more correct and less bloated. It also basically allows you to think coding while you design, which can make things easier as well, but I guess also limit you in a way.

Also, one of the best tips I've gotten as far as web design goes is the following: Websites are visited by people wanting to read or view content. Obvious, yes, but forgotten so many times by web designers. Presentation of content is the most important thing (aside from, you know, content)! And this means paying attention to margins, paddings, using invisible grids etc. I've seen plenty of beautiful designs/layouts that were basically a white background with text presented in a really tasteful way. Of course, companies, organizations etc. will want things to look good, but it doesn't help if things look good, but actually viewing the content is a bitch. I could probably point you to dozens of websites where the design is really beautiful, but the text is fucking awful to read without highlighting it or changing the size or font or whatever in the browser.

And like Jens said, details can make or break a design. They are important.

[J-cob9000]

Ew. Flash. I tried it once and I phailed at it.

Speaking of phailing, WYSIWYG phails. It adds all of this crap to the beginning and doesn't do things right. It annoys the crap out of me.
I hand-code my code.

And Jens, I am trying to work on yours but until just now there have been cousins over here annoying the hell out of me.


EDIT: http://youlove.us/
This is amazing stuff.

[J-cob9000]

Indeed. I have a really ugly mock up done. If you want to see it is here.
The bar on the bottom will be opaque and you will be able to see the background(s?) sort of. The content will pop up in a div in the middle.
Yay. I actually like this idea and if I ever get around to it, I might actually code it.

[Melodic]

THE SAME CAN BE SAID FOR BOTH VAGINAS AND MOCK-UPS: never attempt to do either with 0% hardness.

[BlahBlah]

Ew. Flash. I tried it once and I phailed at it.

Speaking of phailing, WYSIWYG phails. It adds all of this crap to the beginning and doesn't do things right. It annoys the crap out of me.
I hand-code my code.

And Jens, I am trying to work on yours but until just now there have been cousins over here annoying the hell out of me.


EDIT: http://youlove.us/
This is amazing stuff.

That youlove site is horrible, I can't read the text properly in Google Chrome. Not a good first sign for a design company... Also, scrolling the page fucks it up.

If you're handcoding sites then you REALLY need to learn about web security, if they're dynamic sites. It's one of the biggest problems around, even large companies get hit by XSS, CSRF and SQL injection. Read up on it, good security is essential!

[Spluff]

It's probably not tested with Chrome. I can read it all fine in Firefox and IE, but it is very laggy whilst scrolling, and the foreground text scrolls over the bottom menu bar, which screws both of them up.

[jmrz]

Yeah, I have no problems at all viewing youlove.us in Firefox on MacOSX.

[J-cob9000]

Yeah, the site looks just fine to me and I love the sky effect.


Jens,


This is not final. There's a div going in the middle that the content will go in and the background will change randomly between different 'green' images.
What do you think?

[Melodic]

Although I'm not the client, let me try my hand at this:

-the main title should be centered vertically in the title bar, but more appropriately the bar should just be cut shorter and the bottom of the slogan should match the bottom of the title

-the globe is too busy making its mind up about whether or not it wants to be in the footer. Either enlarge it and stroke it so that it is quite obviously expanding beyond the footer, or confine it inside.

-as this is a front page, it needs more information than a small footer. As such, turning the last third of the page into a content form would be a good idea, and minimizing the images (borders are your friend) will help the text to stand out, instead of being engulfed by the images.

[J-cob9000]

People, I have lost the file for this as I didn't save it in psd. I still have the png but I can't edit it that well as it uses separate layers.

1. the main title should be centered vertically in the title bar, but more appropriately the bar should just be cut shorter and the bottom of the slogan should match the bottom of the title

2. the globe is too busy making its mind up about whether or not it wants to be in the footer. Either enlarge it and stroke it so that it is quite obviously expanding beyond the footer, or confine it inside.

3. -as this is a front page, it needs more information than a small footer. As such, turning the last third of the page into a content form would be a good idea, and minimizing the images (borders are your friend) will help the text to stand out, instead of being engulfed by the images.

1. Does centering really matter all that much? Look at Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, eBay, Amazon. Their titles are all left aligned.
But I see what you mean about them being vertically aligned.

2. Yes, the globe is a little too big. I think I'll scale it down a bit.

3. "This is not final. There's a div going in the middle that the content will go in."
Are you saying make the bottom box a little bigger and put the content there? I don't think that would be quite right but I have another idea for the content and background picture. I'll post a picture in a while.

[Ladybug]

1: Centering it vertically, not horizontally.

And as for the content box, I have a feeling the background would be too busy for the semi-transparent black box with white text on top, maybe? Because if you take a look in the bottom left corner, the little copyright-note already makes things weird down there, and that's just a little piece of white. Text in the middle would be lots of (what looks like it would be white) text on top of white sheep, and that just seems like it would be awful to read, even with a semi-transparent background. But I might be wrong.

[BlahBlah]

Simplicity is everything in web design. Pages shouldn't be cluttered.

[mishy]

ooh! i wanna add my own two bits here...
i took an expensive, shitty 3-month course on web design and ended up with tuition debt, a useless certificate, no portfolio, and a strong understanding that i would never stop tweaking a site design and call it done. so no, the self-employed web designer thing was not my calling....

i did have some experiences that might help you. there is quite the market for non-profit organizations or hobby/interest sites of family relations, if you're willing to work for small fees.
http://rihretirees.com/index.asp is not my design, but a site i worked on previous to the current webmaster they went with. it's an alumni site for a hospital in my hometown, my mom was on the committee and got me involved. this is the kind of market you might be able to get work with. your fees would certainly undercut the local businesses' going rates, these people would be equally interested in training on how to use the site you create for them, and these are the kind of people that would be willing to have a site made by someone who is new to it. there's people willing to pay like $100 for their hobby group to have forums and a front page but wouldn't have a clue how to do it themselves. (these people might be equally willing to pay for "email how to" training and "beginner facebook". heh.)

so in my opinion:
a) work on those details.
b) market yourself to family and friends - someone will want a website for that niche demographic. (consider doing the first for free, or maybe you've already done that...)
c) once you've got a few websites under your belt, up and in use, you have a portfolio to market to the more lucrative potential customers. but don't underestimate the market of the elderly - the ones who want to be computer literate but aren't. yet.

ok, there's my weird two bits to this conversation. if you're still young, and this is funner than a real job to you, then listen to the advice of the professionals (on site design) but focus on the people that you're building sites for and what their needs are.

heh. i won't be mentioning my own site here until i get some content on it.... then y'all can critique it and tell me what-for. 

[jmrz]

I'm going to jump in here and mention that if you are going to use anyone's images that are not your own, make sure that you find out whether it is okay, and then make sure that you credit them properly. Just something I thought worthwhile mentioning considering I recognised that picture straight away and it's one of Elcapitan's who is a member of these boards.

[Melodic]

Plus, the copyright logo is still in the picture. Ew.

[J-cob9000]

Oh. You're right. It is one of his pictures. I meant to contact him and ask permission after sort of finalizing the design. I forgot but I will change the picture if he has anything against me using it.

[Catfish_Man]

Design for XHTML 1.0.

Thread derailing time.

No, don't. The *one and only benefit* of XHTML is that it's XML (a rather dubious benefit anyway). But, if you actually use XML, Internet Explorer will barf. So you'll have to tell the browser it's text/html instead. At that point you've lost the one benefit, and odds are you're not even going to be using valid XML since your tools will be parsing as HTML and won't catch things like missing CDATA blocks.

In conclusion, please do validate your pages and attempt to use good design and development practices, but stick to HTML in 99.9% of cases.

[mishy]

ty catfish man. i didn't know that about IE & XML. (not sarcasm.)
i r learning tings in dis thread. ty for creating the thread, midnight.

[Cicero]

Sites suck.   I do web design for a living and there is no quality here.

[mishy]

hrmm.. Cicero... i think you've posted the definition of "pointless criticism". try "constructive criticism" now or don't bother posting. (i second Jeans's comment.)

maybe i'm still too "plantmonster" to be that harsh and get away with it, but i actually feel minorly offended by Cicero's purely negative comments in the middle of a constructive conversation. he might as well have told us all to sod off...

[Cicero]

Cicero, it would be cool if we could get some more inspiration into this thread - why don't you post a site or two that you've made?

I didn't design the one that is in my profile, I contribute to it.

Yes, I realize that this one I'm linking you two now is WordPress, but I customized the scheme.  It was simpleton work, but it looks fresh and professional.   I am good at graphics and design.   This I know.

Woops:  http://broncosdraft.wordpress.com/

[mishy]

...a wordpress blog that's only had 1 entry since april? and you do web design for a living? and this is what you show us for inspiration? and just a link, no explanation as to what is "professional and clean" about it? no suggestions for the young man who started this thread looking for advice?
Cicero, c'mon, man... CONTRIBUTE something to this conversation if you are going to post here...

ok. i won't post again here until i have something more to contribute...

[Melodic]

I +1 Jens now that the above has been revealed to be a KNAVE and MISCREANT.

[Cicero]

Cicero, you didn't even pick the colour scheme yourself. It was picked for you by the team the site is apparently about. What exactly did you do? It looks just like a regular WordPress to me.

Stones in glass houses and all that. Get lost, asshole.

Wrong, it's a custom scheme that I did (kept the default background) through simple CSS.   I edited the code to my liking and made the site simple and more graphically oriented.    I'm good at what I do.   

[Cicero]

Oh, btw, Cicero? Don't give yourself airs. What you've shown us of your work is amateurish at best, and swinging your e-dick around about it just makes you look foolish. Customising a WordPress template does not make you a professional web designer.

I'd stack my graphic design capabilities against anyone's on here.   Oh, and I didn't show you that template to say I was a professional web designer.   I do web design for a living right now (well, one of my jobs) and have had dozens of clients since I was a teenager.    I was making thousands on web sites as a teenager while you guys were flipping burgers with McDonald's.   Sorry if that bothers you, but that's how the world worked for me.    I'm happy with where I'm at and I had the opportunity to learn from someone who has designed for some large American an international companies.   I'm sorry if that bothers you El Capitan.

[öde]

It would be nice if you could back up your claims and not insult anyone.

[Jace]

I've always been pretty terrible with the actual technical side of web design, but I'm an artist and I can tell what's pleasing to the eyes. YOU'RE ALL TERRIBLE, STOP DOING THIS AND GO KILL YOURSELVES, NEVER MAKE A WEBSITE AGAIN. Seriously though, there's some good designs, I suggest studying color theory. But I suggest that a lot.

Also: Sometimes you can just ignore the tumor and it'll go away. But that'd be better placed in a medical thread.

[mishy]

If you could link to your portfolio, which you can't be a webdesigner without in this day and age, ...

so Midnight, i'd like to bring this thread around and point out that the argument between the posters in this thread who are trying to help you, and PantsFTW and Cicero (who are not helping, quite the opposite), is a very good example of how people aren't likely to take your word for what you can do, you need to have a portfolio to show them.

i still stand by my "good luck" and "there's opportunities out there if you know how to find them, even for you at this early stage in your web designing."
don't let these asshole fakers discourage you. they just need to shit on others to feel better about themselves, but at the end of the day, they're still just trolling to be dicks. maybe they have issues, i don't know, but no one takes them seriously.

[supersheep]

Pants isn't actually trolling. If the tumour comment is referring to anyone, it's Cicero. It can often be difficult to identify when something's tongue-in-cheek in the internet, I know.

[mishy]

fair enough. his 4 stars say he's not a troll here.

so i have a question to add here. for someone creating their own personal website, with a few creative things to post on it that they don't want stolen and used without permission, how does one go about putting copyright on their stuff? like, for example, i fuck around in photoshop and make a bunch of wallpapers for myself and i post them on my site to show my friends. granted, i understand the risks of posting *anything* on teh evil interwebz, but is it as simple as putting "© mysite.com 2009" on all the pages, or watermarked on the image? (obviously my site is not mysite.com)

secondly, is it different for something like poetry? i have some shitty poetry i'd like to post... what if it's bad enough someone wants to steal it for a "what not to do" lesson in their english class?

or is copyright only valid to a declared business? or... etc... who can answer questions about this stuff? i realize how clueless i am about it. should i start a new thread?

[mishy]

yeah, there's always the risk that people who don't care about copyright are yoinking your hard work. or my terrible poetry that i wrote in grade nine. heh. i should be so lucky.

[J-cob9000]

Oh, btw, Cicero? Don't give yourself airs. What you've shown us of your work is amateurish at best, and swinging your e-dick around about it just makes you look foolish. Customising a WordPress template does not make you a professional web designer.

I'd stack my graphic design capabilities against anyone's on here.   Oh, and I didn't show you that template to say I was a professional web designer.   I do web design for a living right now (well, one of my jobs) and have had dozens of clients since I was a teenager.    I was making thousands on web sites as a teenager while you guys were flipping burgers with McDonald's.   Sorry if that bothers you, but that's how the world worked for me.    I'm happy with where I'm at and I had the opportunity to learn from someone who has designed for some large American an international companies.   I'm sorry if that bothers you El Capitan.

/asshole

Anyway, I've been busy with school. Shut up, Jacob, no you haven't, you've been playing WoW.
Okay, yes. I started WoW. I'll do the design in a while, I promise.
>__>

[mishy]

oh noes! the WoW has him!

srsly tho, i'd have my own website up by now if it weren't for a very long naxx run... and maybe questing and heroics for days after that... WoW certainly is a time-suck and a motivation-killer. i still love it.
cheers, midnight. gl hf.

[J-cob9000]

Starting on a new design right now!

[StaedlerMars]

Sticking a copyright notice on a web site is enough, though that only protects you legally - people can still nick your work and you'll never know it. The world is a pretty big place!

What about the stuff that you've created for other sites? if on your site you say: "all work displayed here is copyright by me" is that enough for those sites as well? Or do you have to go and place it on all those sites?