General Chat / www.erictecture.com

hey guys,

been a while since I was last around here. so I thought I'd drop in to say hey. as some of the older guys might remember, I studied for architecture at the university of cincinnati and graduated in 08. anyway, I recently got myself a domain and built up my website from scratch to serve as my online portfolio and to give me the flexibility of having my own web space. I'm also going to be doing some freelance work on the side for graphics.

but anyway, the main reason of the post is just to get some input on the site since I know a lot of people around here are design oriented.
so, check it out and give me some feedback, the site is around 90-95% done.
http://www.erictecture.com/

Eric

I dont like the page backgrounds that you have.They remind me a of a youth project ran by a council. Id remove some of your work aswell,the pieces that arent very good in particular (i.e the photoshop trickery bits). They make you look bad in comparison to your other work

I agree about the backgrounds.
Also the photos in the photography section aren't linked with the lightbox thingy.
I don't like how your HOME button stands out and the blog buttons look somehow sloppy (those with 2 lines).

"MFG"

thanks for the feedback guys.

I have been thinking of trimming down the number of images I use for each page. That way I could take out the unnecessary and not so good images. As for the backgrounds...I might simplify them a bit, though personally, I like the concept.

5dave, I don't know why the photography page isnt working properly for you, I've checked it on mac/pc with firefox, ie, and opera and it works fine. what are you using?

A quick update, I'm planning on merging the home and about pages into just the home page.

Other things you need to do:
Create cohesion between all parts of the site including the blogs. Eg you've got a 3 different typefaces used throughout the whole site. Just stick to one especially for copy.
Adjust the site so there is some alignment not just everything centrally aligned
Remove pointless links.example http://erictecture.com/Cranbrook.html - theres no need to have a link on that page that goes back to that page again
Change the background to make the type easier to read.Then you wouldnt have to have such harsh colours on horrible coloured blocks. Maybe run a transparency over the whole center of the type then you could still have the images either side

The lightbox works for me now.
Funny, I tested it 5 min ago and it still hadn't worked, now it works.
I'm using Firefox on XP Pro.

"MFG"

So, nobody else was like, "Holy crap!" AP's back?

Everybody else gets love when they come back. Why not AP? You guys are so cruel...

The lightbox works for me as well, and I'm using what 5Dave's using.

I actually kinda like the background, but it doesn't really fit with the colors of the nav buttons. It's like you've got two different themes on the same page.

well I've done more work to the site and am pretty contented with it at the moment. I might tweak it some more here and there but it has come out basically how I had envisioned.

Any other suggestions, comments, etc?

http://erictecture.com