Re: [Firebird-website] A few mockups for firebirdsql.org website

[Pavel C. <pc...@ib...>]

marius popa napsal(a):
> Bandean Lorand (one of our designers) proposed and worked on an few
> designs for the new firebirdsql.org website
> He asked for feedback and what should be done next

Wow, that was quick :-)

> http://reea.net/clients/firebirdfoundation/design1.jpg
> http://reea.net/clients/firebirdfoundation/design2.jpg
> http://reea.net/clients/firebirdfoundation/design3.jpg

Well, I understand that these are just quick mock-ups that rehash the
current website just to showcase the potential, so I'll judge them as such.

My first impression when I saw them was that Bandean is a man we're
waited for so long, because he was able to put up few proposals that are
"almost there" with very little information what we're looking for. For
me it's clear sign that he has the right kind of artistic intuition and
professionalism needed to come with truly amazing design when we'll get
our ducks in line and feed him with our requirements, and I'm looking
forward to our cooperation on new Firebird web site.

Now to the designs:

- The first one is too cold. The red and scarce use of orange doesn't
really fits well into mostly blue palette.

- The second one is too "flashy", because there is too much bright
orange for otherwise light blue-toned colours. I see that first two
designs are attempts to came with design that meets the request for
"corporate yet firebirdy theme", as blue+grey+white palette is corporate
one while orange is firebirdy. Unfortunately, these colours don't fit
together at all. Thanks to Bandean everyone can see that now, so we can
move forward :-)

- In third design, Bandean gave up on "corporate" palette and came with
"sexy firebird" theme and it's clearly the step in right direction.
However, it's "too sexy", so we'd need to "scale it down" a bit. The
black page border is at fault here. Without it (just with good old white
border), it would look more corporate as required. We can play a bit
with grey scale and shadows, borders and frames here to keep contrast
for main page content.

So I see the third one as best starting point for next iteration.

1. The header is almost perfect, it just needs to be lowered a bit: by
removing the donate button (we'll put it on download page and other most
visited areas, it doesn't need to be in page header) and by putting the
menu bar on the side of logo image.

2. The colour scheme is good. The soft orange used on sidebar is nice,
but we need to avoid heavy use of areas with vivid orange backgrounds
(like title box and attention box in example design). We can try to play
with orange scale here or better try to use various frames (solid,
fading etc.) for these areas instead solid background.

3. Change the page border as described before.

4. We have to find the style for most frequently used elements: H1-4,
hyper links, EM, PRE/source code listings, BR, various boxes (for tips,
side notes etc.).

However, this is all about basic theme / skin. We also need to define
the basic site layout, and I will create a separate thread for its
discussion.

best regards
Pavel Cisar
IBPhoenix
Firebird Project QA & website