project 1 prelim critique magic

[ravennvrmre]

For project 1, I decided to go with magic supplies. The name is Raibird's (after my character) brews, blasts, and more. For the top version, I wanted to mess with border illustrations, and for the other I wanted a more simplified layout and less illustrations. I'm still messing with the colors and the logo

[ravennvrmre]

Oh I did all the illustrations except the inside potions but I plan to for the final

[rmiyashiro]

I definitely prefer your top design. The imagery is terrific and it's easy to navigate. It'd be cool to see some animation in it too. I imagine the witches flying around making swoosh sounds and stuff. Your top design might be a bit difficult to translate to a responsive page though if done well it'd be totally awesome.

[awesomeMF]

Vicki,

I like the first design. You can't sell potions without the visual feel. You are a very good illustrator. I'd crop in a little more on the castle, and crop out sky and dirt - just a little. I like the goth type for logo, but not so much for nav bars - unless you make the type bigger. Maybe use a san serif font for title and describe info for readability. I understand that in the second design, you wanted a more simple clean layout, but the castle and witches make the site much more fun to view. I'd make background and font more contrast - either lighten background with dark font color, or darken background with light font color. Maybe make social media buttons run along the bottom so it can be on each page you click. Overall awesome work, can't wait to see the final look!

[dnorwood]

What a cute concept! I like the Home page from the first set and the inner page from the second set. To me, these two together would make a very well balanced site.
I do think the Home page is a little too busy. if you took out some of the clouds and enlarged the castle just a little, it would become more the focal point of your design. I would also reduce the size of the social media buttons. Right now they are taking a pretty primary place whereas they should be playing a more minor role to your product and information. And if you do that, you can move your navigation buttons down onto the top part of the castle wall and unsquish them. On both the Home page and the inner page, I think the navigation text would be easier to read if it was white. The black just doesn't seem to stand out. I wouldn't change anything else on the inner page, it looks great to me.
Happy Designing!
Denise

[BecomeAHero]

I agree that you should marry the two designs, have the home page be the full illustrated castle and the inner product page be the second of the two layouts. The home page is busy though, but you could take out some of the links and organize them outside of the castle on the bottom of the page, and keep only the most important information inside.

Great character illustration!

[Instructor]

Lol It is magic!

Your first design is by far the strongest one of the two, go with that one. It has a great sense of whimsey. The castle feel like the main menu of a videogame. I like the potion icons on the inner page. Makes me feel like I'm in one of those hole in the wall markets in Zelda. Your little witch characters add a great sense of fun and establish your brand as not taking itself too seriously. The green and gray colorscheme feels warm and inviting so that people won't get too scared when they buy a potion that might make them grow horns! Your bodycopy and headline type looks semi-medieval without being illegible, an impressive feat. Also, the Nintendo seal of quality gets a good chuckle out of me!

I'm not sold on your logo/nav type. I think it's a little difficult to read for navigation type. Your bodycopy and headline type is very similar and much more easily read. I think it might look even better if you played with some texturing, shadows, highlights and glows in photoshop. Make it a little deeper and less 2D. This thing's going to be a real bear to build. Have fun piecing it together and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Nice work!

[kaycee_weddell]

It looks like you have a lot of time invested into both designs and they look amazing. Great job! I think I prefer the second design because it showcases your product a little better than the first. The first design distracts me a little because you have a lot going on. It almost reminds me of a video game. Maybe combine the two together to create a more rounded design. Great job!

[NevadaCowgirl]

I like the first roughs. This looks like a lot of fun when navigating through your web site. One thing I would watch is the stars in your logo design. They get blurred when they are small and hard to tell what they are.

[dzync88]

I really like the castle design - has a fun, inviting feel that makes me want to explore (and play) more. However, I also like the logo design on the hanging board. Any way to incorporate the two? As usual, your drawings are awesome!!!