30 Minute Redesign: Week 64 Vote
30 Minute Redesign: Dan’s CartoonsHave every post delivered to your inbox and get access to hundreds of useful design freebies.
PSDFan Extra
Week 69: Rogue Aviator
This week I will be redesigning: Rogue Aviator.
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:
- The site is actually fairly well designed. A nice color palette, clean design and professional layout.
- The menu is clear and easy to use.
- This homepage uses the right amount of welcome text. The copy is just right, immediately explaining what the book does and drawing people’s interest.
- The logo is really engaging, and creates a nice visual centerpiece for the design.
WEAKNESSES:
- My main issue is that nothing really stands out about the site. There’s nothing terribly wrong, but it’s a little plain.
- The welcome text and homepage copy is spot on. However, there should be elements from some of the subpages on the homepage. For example, it would be good to highlight reviews on the homepage.
- It wasn’t actually immediately aware that the site concerned a book (until I began reading). There should be some kind of visual clue that the site concerns a book.
- The title area reading ‘Ace Abbot’ feels a little obsolete. It doesn’t really tell us anything about the site or who ‘Ace Abbot’ is. I would use either the logo or the start of the welcome text as a title area.
My Redesign
As always, I was limited by the 30 minute time-frame, but I tried to improve upon several of Rogue Aviator’s features, adding a few design flourishes and a clearer layout that promoted content over wasted space:
MY AIMS FOR THE REDESIGN:
- I made the site more visually interesting, by including engaging visual elements such as a plane soaring over the header section of the site.
- I added some content from the inner pages to the sidebar of the homepage, helping to draw readers in. These include a top rated review and ‘about the author’ section.
- I included some imagery of a book to give a visual clue to the theme of the site.
- I included a horizontal navigation, as personally I feel these are more user friendly.
Before/After:
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 30 Minute Redesigns
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 principles.
- You will get emailed the .psd of your redesign and can do whatever you want with it!
NOTE: I can only accept sites with English content, as foreign language websites are simply too hard for me to work with.
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.
9 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.
A really nice redesign and I agree with all the points made about the previous design. Sometimes there can be nothing wrong with a design it just needs some edits to show a clear hierarchy between the elements. Until it was mentioned in this post I had no idea this was to promote a book so this shows that you need to make sure this is clear from the off! A really nice redesign.
Thanks Stephanie! This was one of the better designed sites I’ve had to work with in the series, but I still think my main points are fairly crucial.
nice work!..looks so much better than the original site!
Thanks Greg! I’m glad you liked my redesign.
Great work as usual Tom! The design really draws your eye to the content right away, and is much easier to follow than the original design.
Thanks buddy. I tried to use the addition of the plane to really draw the eye towards the welcome content.
Amazing, as always.
Don’t you think that “The Rogue” in the logo is a little bit confusing?
Thanks Álvaro! How do you mean it’s confusing? Visually or it’s meaning?
Nicely done. I was really surprised in what you can achieve within only 30 minutes. Non the less, the work is amazing.