30 Minute Redesigns – Suggestions Needed!
30 Minute Redesign: Ink ProductionsHave every post delivered to your inbox and get access to hundreds of useful design freebies.
PSDFan Extra
Week 10: Rapsodia
Rapsodia is a music center offering events and lessons:
In the space of 5 minutes I can identify some of the key strengths and weaknesses of this design, and sketch out a mockup.
STRENGTHS:
- Clear menu design, easy to navigate text lins
- Large prominent logo
- It’s fairly obvious what the site is about due to the music-related visuals
WEAKNESSES:
- The logo is blurred and appears unfinished/sloppy in areas
- There is no real homepage content, nothing drawing people further into the site, bar the navigation.
- The design is really too simple, there is a complete lack of design touches.
My Redesign
As always, I was limited by the 30 minute time-frame, but I tried to improve upon several of Rapsodia’s features, adding a few design flourishes and a clearer layout that promoted content over wasted space:
WHAT I TRIED TO DO:
- Add a menu hover state to make it clearer
- Redesigned the logo to make it more professional
- Add in photo elements to give extra flourish to the design
- Add in more homepage content, such as recent photos, upcoming events etc… in order to draw people further into the site.
Comparing the 2 Designs:
Here is a quick comparison between the original design and my 30 minute redesign. Sure, my design could be more polished, but I believe that a lot of the basic elements have been improved upon, creating a more pleasant browsing experience.
How and Why To Enter Redesign Saturdays
You can have the chance to have your website redesigned in next weeks post. All you need to do is leave a comment to this post with your website address and why you think it needs a redesign.
The Benefits of Getting Your Site Redesigned Include:
- Most obviously – a FREE redesign job!
- Your website gets exposure to PSDFAN’s thousands of readers
- You understand how to improve your website. This isn’t just a redesign, it’s a lesson in design.
- You will get emailed the .psd of your redesign and can do whatever you want with it!
So please, leave a comment today for a chance to have your website redesigned next week!
About the Author:
Tom is the founder of PSDFAN. He loves writing tutorials, learning more about design and interacting with the community. On a more interesting note he can also play guitar hero drunk with his teeth.
11 Comments:
Related Posts
Your Design Work, But More Awesome:
Do you know the basic tools in Photoshop but feel that your work is still looking average? Join our creative community at FanExtra and get the direction you need to take your work to the next level.
Nice improvement!. Not sure about the orange button, but far better, and only in 30 minutes.
Original was way better. The gray is blah.
Good redesign, Tom! I think the reason why the orange button seems a little peculiar (per Hugolatra) is due to the preponderance of gray. But orange is a good attention-getting color for calls to action. Perhaps a black would work here as well.
You’ve definitely given readers a reason to further explore the site by providing more impacting visuals as well as content to draw readers deeper into the site and not leave.
Cheers,
Lee
I would need a redesign, this page, http://www.travelinparadisecr.com/
because my dad made it and i think it can be more elaborated and also because he thinks that CSS is a really bad idea!! So, if you can tell him that, its the opposite, then it would be the best thing you could ever do =) as well as a new design..
Thanks!
I like the original better. The gray design looks bland, predictable and dull. My favorite thing about the original design was the navigation. The larger version on the redesign looks tacky.
Thanks for the constructive critiques guys. Interesting how it’s mixed opinions this week. I agree that I was a little unsure about the gray, but I’m glad some of you like it. Thanks for the feedback anyway!
Veronica: What exactly did you like about the original navigation?
The redesign is a major improvement over the original design as you can see the navigation clearer and the images with the text make it more appealing to look at. I also have to agree that the orange colour for the button definitely makes it stand out.
Can’t wait to see next weeks redesign.
Great redesign as usual Tom! If I were to be critical, I probably would of stayed away from the flat greys and introduced some more colour to the website to give it a bit more depth and individuality.
Keep up the good work.
Great job Tom! I really enjoy this series. I’m consistently impressed with how much improvement you create in just 30 minutes.
It definitely looks better than the original web design, however I’m not to keen on the background it looks a bit dull, the writing doesn’t really stand out enough. And if you are going to have that orange colour, I would have included it in the navigation aswell. Although for a 30 minutes redesign its pretty good, nice work.
What a brilliant redesign You’ve done really well with it