NovajoWhite, Ugh. Options

[schizo]

I got my first commission since opening Flamora a few weeks ago. The guy said he wanted the layout to be like my The Machine vector, so I thought it would be fairly simple. I assumed all I would have to do is rearrange a few points in the original PSD and then code it.

Wrong.

Before you know it I'm trying to figure out how to add Oprah and Margaret Thatcher to the design and I'm redoing the whole right side because it wasn't 3D.

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This is why I haven't been as active lately. I spent my days staring at this thing, about to pull my hair out. There are a lot of things I would change about the final product, but they're all things he wanted.

At least now I know I have to put my foot down a bit or charge more.

[none345678]

lol The Oprah magazine is so cute. How much are you charging?

[schizo]

$50. At first I thought I might be too much, but after this I'm pretty sure I should charge more.

[Maccabee]

I like the rollovers and stuff :)
On 1024x768 it adds a horizontal scroll bar. And on the rounded corners, it kind of makes like a square. Let me show you what I mean...



And the background doesn't look so seemless on larger monitors but it looks good, and it's better then plain. me likey. Even though it is one of your plainer, and darker layouts. And im not so sure im digging the purple.

[schizo]

Yeah, the corners were one of the things that were giving me a hard time. I only had the top corners rounded in the beginning and everything was fine, but then he told me he wanted the bottom ones rounded too. It would have been easy if he didn't want the background to be textured on top of everything.

I'm just hoping he doesn't care/notice. I can't see them on one of my computers because of the brightness.

[Mikeplyts]

Ooo, this looks really cool Gabi! I don't see any square-ish things on the corners on my monitor.


Oh, and LOOOOOL @ the Windows to Mac conversion.

[jiyong]

Looks pretty good Gabi (: I see the corner edges though. I think the header font is a little too close to the right, and for the "Further Reading" header, "Reading" falls on the next line, behind the book thumbnails, instead of being on the same line as "further". I like how you did the machine :D

[dilligrout]

lmao.. oprah.. gosh.
And what's with the pride flag?

[schizo]

^He wanted for it to show that he's against homophobia, but he originally wanted me to just put the flag there. I didn't think that would convey his message very well, so I just put an x on it.

Why not make the purple areas of the corners be transparent so the white blends in? Anyway, this is nice! The rollovers are sweet, haha. You know what, I came across this site yesterday. Freaky shit, man.

I tried that, but then I needed to set a background color so the boxes could stretch and that got rid of the transparency. D:

Looks pretty good Gabi (: I see the corner edges though. I think the header font is a little too close to the right, and for the "Further Reading" header, "Reading" falls on the next line, behind the book thumbnails, instead of being on the same line as "further". I like how you did the machine :D

What browser are you using? The whole "Further Reading" header is on the same line for me in IE and FF.

[Tomates]

can you do the white boxes sepreattely and save them as a PNG? Then the little purple corners wont show.

[jiyong]

What browser are you using? The whole "Further Reading" header is on the same line for me in IE and FF.

Firefox 3.5, 1280x800 resolution.

click to enlarge

[schizo]

^I don't know what version of Firefox I have. D: I just updated it a day or two ago so it's the newest one.

can you do the white boxes sepreattely and save them as a PNG? Then the little purple corners wont show.

The boxes need to stretch to fit however much he writes, so I can't just make a set image of the box. I have one image for the header and one for the bottom of the box. Then the background of the box is the light grey color.

Is there some method of making rounded corners on stretching boxes that I'm unaware of?

[none345678]

I didn't even notice the corners till someone pointed them out tbh.

[manny-the-dino]

The corners aren't a big deal, tbh. You kind of have to be at an angle to notice them. I agree that the headers or whatever they're called are a bit too close to the edges. But it's a really nice layout. I like it a lot.

[synapse]

Good job with the header image. After that, I really think that it went downhill... I think that you're right about charging $50, for the design, however, you should keep in mind that the person that made his current site, charged only $15 ( that was in her prices section ). So, piss off the client, and they have the right to not complete payment ( unless you stated so in the contract ), and not use your design at all.

I think that you should make the layout wider for the center column, and side column, proportionately. It seems like it may be just a bit too small. Have you showed him the current design? Make sure that you make your client involved in any design/redesign. So you don't end up doing more work than needed.

As for the boxes with the rounded corners and the unrounded corners. You can make the div, a bit smaller, and cap the div with the image on top, and bottom with CSS.

[schizo]

^Thanks. I'll try that out if he mentions it.

I think that you should make the layout wider for the center column, and side column, proportionately. It seems like it may be just a bit too small. Have you showed him the current design? Make sure that you make your client involved in any design/redesign. So you don't end up doing more work than needed.

I did my best to keep him involved and I think that's why I started getting so frustrated. I showed him a sketch, the header image when it was almost finished, a full mock-up, and different stages of the actual coded page. We were emailing back and forth a lot. The problem was that he asked for things to be changed that were there twenty steps beforehand that he didn't mention when I showed him the first time. It's a lot of work to have to go back and change something that has already been set in place. While the end product isn't necessarily worth more that $50, I guess that's why I feel like I should have charged more.

[none345678]

You should always charge extra for changes, or at least when they become a pain in the ass. That's how a lot of designers get ripped off. The client will keep asking for "little" revisions until you have basically done twice more work than you getting paid.

[Firiath]

It looks really nice
But I would prefer the 4 colors of the rainbow thingy
To be 6
Gay pride ftw :3