New Website design and logo?

Thinking about improving the Artwork in Vega Strike, or making your own Mod? Submit your question and ideas in this forum.

Moderator: pyramid

Post Reply
zaydana
Site Administrator
Site Administrator
Posts: 478
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 10:05 am
Location: Perth, Western Australia
Contact:

New Website design and logo?

Post by zaydana »

Edit: The preview looks pretty ugly - so you shuld probably click on the thumbnail and look at the whole thing...

---

Well... heres my take at the whole website/logo thing. If you guys like it i could probably get it running in a few weeks. Also... if anybody can find a better font (not hard), i will love you forever. Send it to me via cms if you got one.

Criticism is welcome. And if any of the more established artists want a .psd to muck around with, just ask. :)

- Zaydana
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Post by klauss »

Nice.
I like the darkness... this bright screen is starting to give me a headache on a daily basis.
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
www2
Venturer
Venturer
Posts: 537
Joined: Sat May 14, 2005 10:51 am
Location: milkyway->the sol system->earth->Europe->The Nederland->Soud Holland->Leiden
Contact:

Re: New Website design and logo?

Post by www2 »

@zaydana
look good
only a beeter front in the secent row...
Last edited by www2 on Thu Nov 03, 2005 8:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
All Your Base Are Belong To Us
hurleybird
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1671
Joined: Fri Jan 03, 2003 12:46 am
Location: Earth, Sol system.
Contact:

Post by hurleybird »

Looking good so far! The text area looks like it needs some sort of a solid boundary though. Perhaps a 50% grey line kind of thing everywhere but the text area?
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Post by chuck_starchaser »

I like it except at first glance it reads "VEGASTRIHE". I don't like all-caps, even in titles, myself. I do like darkness too; white backgrounds are really painful to look at.
zaydana
Site Administrator
Site Administrator
Posts: 478
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 10:05 am
Location: Perth, Western Australia
Contact:

Post by zaydana »

Version 2, after reading ur suggestions. I've put a box around the text... but thats about it :P Some questions tho...

www2 - what do you mean by the second row? tell me what it says...

and to all those saying stuff about a font - if you can find a better one - send it to me :)

- Zaydana
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Silverain
Expert Mercenary
Expert Mercenary
Posts: 984
Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2003 5:35 am
Location: Brisbane, Land of Oz
Contact:

Post by Silverain »

While you have the wiki reference, I would suggest keeping the direct link 'Manual' to the wiki manual on the front page as well - most people would not realise the online manual is buried in the wiki.
THOUGHT CRIME! [points finger] THOUGHT CRIME!
zaydana
Site Administrator
Site Administrator
Posts: 478
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 10:05 am
Location: Perth, Western Australia
Contact:

Post by zaydana »

Yupyup... any links up the top can be added very easily later. The links there are just demos to give an idea what it would look like.

I might end up adding a drop down menu to wiki as well as putting a manual thing on the front - so it lists the main sections from all pages with a menu.

People still havn't told me whether they actually _want_ to change to the new design or not... :?:
Zeog
ISO Party Member
ISO Party Member
Posts: 453
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 10:30 am
Location: Europe

Post by Zeog »

I'm sorry, but I don't find the proposed layout very appealing. I'm working in a relatively bright room. Even with my monitor brightness on 100% I can't really see the symbols on the left, and can't read the text on the top. It's like "???STRI???" and "???LCOME TO V??ASTRIHE". All the other texts on the right being the same. Where are the links/menus you are talking about?

The top right header image with that star cloud looks good to me.

When designing a new website-layout I think it's not a good idea to work with drop-down menus. It's a lot of javascript hacking and at the end just hiding potentially important links, not talking of that some users out there may not be able to actually drop down these menus.

I'm sorry, but I prefer the current homepage style over the proposed one, although I don't like these images as links on the top. For me it doesn't make sense to put letters (link text) into a picture, not making it machine readable. There is so much beautiful CSS out there...
www2
Venturer
Venturer
Posts: 537
Joined: Sat May 14, 2005 10:51 am
Location: milkyway->the sol system->earth->Europe->The Nederland->Soud Holland->Leiden
Contact:

Post by www2 »

@zaydana
i mine: can beter use a oder fonts than the curent one...
All Your Base Are Belong To Us
charlieg
Elite Mercenary
Elite Mercenary
Posts: 1329
Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2003 11:51 pm
Location: Manchester, UK
Contact:

Post by charlieg »

I like the design but we already have far superior logo submissions, so perhaps you could try shoehorning in one of those.
zaydana
Site Administrator
Site Administrator
Posts: 478
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 10:05 am
Location: Perth, Western Australia
Contact:

Post by zaydana »

i agree that CoJL's logos are much nicer than mine... but to incorporate one i'd need him to either send me a .psp or work on putting his one in by himself, and sending me the restul to stick into the HTML.

The main problem with a lot of his work is that it just doesn't fit in a web design kinda way. You'd need to be able to somehow repeat parts of the image for a start along the x-axis... which means none of the fancy backgrounds that he has :P Thats kinda why i put my own one in.

However, his "vegastrike" writing would fit in great, and if he could send me some good fonts to use with it then that could work real well.

As for his draft 2 logo... that would be even better and i could probably fit it in a web design. But i'd need it in seperate background and font layers (i.e. a .psd) ... plus i'd probably need his help to do some other images on the same theme.

CoJL... if you are still around now is the time to reply to this post :P
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Post by klauss »

Zeog wrote:I'm sorry, but I don't find the proposed layout very appealing. I'm working in a relatively bright room. Even with my monitor brightness on 100% I can't really see the symbols on the left, and can't read the text on the top. It's like "???STRI???" and "???LCOME TO V??ASTRIHE".
Perhaps, Zaydana, you could up the contrast a bit - for the link section, most importantly, which is dark over dark.
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
hurleybird
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1671
Joined: Fri Jan 03, 2003 12:46 am
Location: Earth, Sol system.
Contact:

Post by hurleybird »

It would probably also work if the text for the links had a 'glow' effect when yuo moved the cursor over.
CoffeeBot
Intrepid Venturer
Intrepid Venturer
Posts: 676
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2005 5:25 am
Location: On the counter by the toaster
Contact:

Post by CoffeeBot »

I'm not overly keen on it myself. There's nothing that quickly grabs my attention, and definitely nothing that immediately tells me what Vegastrike is.

Please, PLEASE take the following as constructive criticism. It's not a bad design, overall, but it needs some usability and design tweaks.

Specific design points:
Color Scheme: As said before, dark on dark isn't good. Either give it a light background, or lighter fonts and logos.
Fluidity: Does the page resize itself to accomodate those of us with a resolution higher than 800x600? Technically, the screen size of a browser at 800x600 is around 750x400, giving room for scrollbars and the like, plus a little margin for error. The title alone will look akward when someone views it with 1024x768, as the edge of the starfield will just end abruptly. If you want this specific layout, fit it into a 750px-wide column, and center it. A border around the whole thing would help it, too, if you go that route.
Title: The disjunction between "Vegastrike" and "upon the coldest sea" leaves me wondering what either is supposed to be.
Top Menu: Bad font. If everyone feels a need to have a different font for them, find something readable.
Side menu/icons: What? I know you said they're going to be "Stylized icons" of the various factions/races insignia/whatnot, but that doesn't necessarily make any sense. As it stands, we have 50 factions/races. Are we going to have 50 icons down the side? I hope not. A better way would to set up a series of submenus, where visitors can choose between races and factions, and do some cross-linking between them. If the icons are going to stay, there should be text with them, explaining what they are, and not just "faction icons" at the top, but actual names of the factions/race with each icon.
Screenshots: Works for me. I assume it would be a rotating set of 5 pics or so?

Frankly, I think we should just stick with the Wiki as the VS website. It has everything we need in it. All that should be done to it is a "re-skinning" of the wiki and some serious restructuring and content editing. Otherwise, it's already configured to do exactly what we need for the VS site.

Personally, some fluid layouts like the following would work perfectly. Obviously, they wouldn't use the same colors/graphics, but, you get the idea.
http://www.glish.com/css/
http://bluerobot.com/web/layouts/layout3.html
http://www.pixy.cz/blogg/clanky/css-3col-layout/

I'm also willing to put my money where my mouth is, and crank out a design or two, if so desired.
zaydana
Site Administrator
Site Administrator
Posts: 478
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 10:05 am
Location: Perth, Western Australia
Contact:

Post by zaydana »

actually, it is fluid :) http://zaydana.servebeer.com/vegastrike ... altho i'm still working on it.

And, if you have noticed, I'm not planning on keeping that font - read what i said before. I've complained about it numerous times.

As for the emblem thingies, they aren't actually a menu - I don't think there is any real indication that they are. They are there for a bit of immersion in the vegastrike universe.

I agree that the colors need changing tho in the menu, that is really the darkest place. For all the other places where i have a darkish font, its not really that i need to change the color of the font, more that i have to put a brighter border arounnd it.

As for the subtitle being disjunct from the title, i really don't know what to do with that... I can't put it next to the title like i originally wanted cos that would mess with the fluid idea to no end. I think it stands out enough as it is as a subtitle - it has a smaller font and etc. Maybe i could put a "vega strike:" in front of it, like the current subtitle?


I think the thing is with vegastrike that while it is an open source with lots of people who don't mind the current website, we are targetting gamers. And most of them will take one look at this website, and then run scraeming for the hils. Not because its a bad website, just because it doesn't have anything to do with the game, and so people can't really use the website to gather anything about the game... so what i'm trying to do is create a website which does capture the essence of the game, even if it sacrifices a bit of the clean layout that most open source website's are built upon.

If you feel like having a shot at another one, go for it. I'd love to see what you can do...
CoffeeBot
Intrepid Venturer
Intrepid Venturer
Posts: 676
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2005 5:25 am
Location: On the counter by the toaster
Contact:

Post by CoffeeBot »

WRT Fluid design: I couldn't gather that from the screenshots. The link you gave works well for that. :) Good stuff.

WRT Subtitle: I don't know, either. Havign the "VS:.." thing seems repetative to me. I'd vote for just sticking it underneath the logo on the left

I know we're targeting gamers, which is totally what we need to do, no doubt about it. My thought about the Wiki is, as I said, reorganization. It really does have everything anyone could ever want in it -- except visual appeal. Change up the front page a little, and put some more pertinant information on it, some stuff that will grab people's attention.

The great part about the wiki and phpBB is that we can totally redesign them without losing their content. My vote would be to work around that, and come up with something that fits. I'll goof around with it this week and see what I can get. The biggest issue, at this point, is the lack of a logo. If we have one that is a 100% sure thing, then we can quickly mold a site around that design. Without it, there's a good bit of uncertainty.

I need to run off, now, but I'll post more on this, later. Thanks for not hating me, Zay :D
charlieg
Elite Mercenary
Elite Mercenary
Posts: 1329
Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2003 11:51 pm
Location: Manchester, UK
Contact:

Post by charlieg »

The menu is near-unreadable on my monitor. Not enough contrast.

Also, please oh please do NOT use graphics when text is more appropriate. I mean the menus. Keep the graphics to a minimum because that way the page loads faster and does not 'jerk' around whilst elements resize (unless you specify the size of each individual graphic).
alens
Just a tourist with a frag'd nav console
Just a tourist with a frag'd nav console
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Nov 07, 2005 1:23 pm

Logo

Post by alens »

I made today a Vega Strike logo:
You can use it for free if you wish

With white bg:
Image
With black bg:
Image
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Post by klauss »

Don't yell at me... it's just an idea.
Would up load times a bit... but I think it would be cool:

Instead of the dark background, and the screenshot section (although, don't remove the screenshot section - just make it a separate section), what about having the black background be a darkened random screenshot?

(not solving anything, I know....)
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
zaydana
Site Administrator
Site Administrator
Posts: 478
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 10:05 am
Location: Perth, Western Australia
Contact:

Post by zaydana »

klauss - the problem with things like that is it becomes _very_ hard to read the text on top of a background like that. Load times wouldn't be too much of a problem, as it wouldn't matter if it didn't appear for a while. The other problem is that you'd want a fluid layout, as coffeebot already said, and that would make it exceptionally hard to achieve that.
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Post by klauss »

Readability is not a problem. It's just a matter of darkening it the right amount (watermark-style). I've done that countless times.

But... fluidity is a problem indeed.
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
CoffeeBot
Intrepid Venturer
Intrepid Venturer
Posts: 676
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2005 5:25 am
Location: On the counter by the toaster
Contact:

Post by CoffeeBot »

The background image is dependent on how you have the page laid out. If it's similar to zaydana's, then, just align the image to the upper left, with no repeating, and set the page background color to the same as the edge of the image (may have to do some fade on the image). If the page is a centered column, then background imagery becomes an issue.

However, that's when creativity comes into play. There may just be a screenshot that would work perfectly. The issue is finding the right shot, and editing it.

I'm mulling some ideas over, and hopefully will have a comp or two done for the weekend. Klauss, I'm beginning to like your idea, and I'm going to see how it can be worked in.
Post Reply