Skin Standards? Options

[Shelley464]

I feel the need to reply to this topic. Blah. If I sound bitchy, forgive me.
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Okay, when we reject a layout and you want to yell at us asking why there are two things I'd like you to remember. One, when there's 50 skins in the queue and 20 are Xanga I will not remember your layout. Okay? So show it to me and I'll tell you why I rejected it. Two, I follow this for the most part. Then I have a set of standards I personally follow when submitting a skin so I apply those to other people's skin's too. They are as follows.
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- High quality, non-grainy image. A good sixth of the layouts I reject lack this. Even MS Paint can have good image quality.
- Nice, readable text and hyperlinks. If I can't read it, then how can anyone else?
- A fairly decent color scheme. Purple does not go with brown and there's too much contrast in red&black.
- A decent sized image. A 900KB image isn't very practical. Your main image shouldn't go over 500KB usually.
- A non-default layout. You can not stick in a background, change the colors,  and call it a day. Simplistic is good, but a layout like that will take you five minutes, tops. That's on a Myspace level to me. (Not including the div overlays!)
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If you think that's too much to ask for, then that's too bad. Really, all I look for is a skin that looks decent and that has effort put into it. Cross-browser compatibility would be nice too.

I not only think this is a reasonable set of standards, but a smart set. I think it's a great idea to have something like this be a set for all mods to follow while using their own judgement. I just had a crazy idea, and ya'll will probably think me just that for it...crazy! What if there was one mod designated as a rejection mod. They could look through the rejected skins and if they disagree with any rejections, they can reinstate them. I know mods are probably limited as is their time and it's not the best idea, but it's something to gnaw on. Thanks for sharing those standards!

[talcumpowder]

Um... My standards are pretty much for all the mods. It's common sense stuff for designers in my opinion. -shrug- &to be fair, the skins I see usually don't get rejected.
[ http://www.createblog.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=77054 ]
That's the other set of standards. Not sure if you saw that.

[nothing_plus_thi...]

i have something to admit.

i am a complete idiot sometimes.

i've read the rules for submitting myspace layouts a few times now, and am just getting around to REALLY reading them.

most of my questions/complaints are covered there. i figure that my layouts have been rejected because of the preview images i submitted with them. am i the only person who gets upset while trying to take a screenshot and crop it to show enough of the layout for it to really be a true preview?! sigh.

This post has been edited by nothing_plus_this: Jan 1 2006, 05:12 PM

[talcumpowder]

You don't really need to show anything but the main focus of the layout. If you're using paint though, the selection tool and Stretch/Skew work to your advantage.

I've cut off a good portion of my banner here.

Here, I reduced the size (100% to 70%) and then cropped 10px off to make it a square. Most of the page is shown and it serves it's purpose, to be a preview. Teaser shots are good too though. That's the kind I usually do, it's more fun that way. I also never make the screenshot 500 by 500. It usually doesn't need to be that big.

[sweetabandon]

I feel the need to reply to this topic. Blah. If I sound bitchy, forgive me.
----
Okay, when we reject a layout and you want to yell at us asking why there are two things I'd like you to remember. One, when there's 50 skins in the queue and 20 are Xanga I will not remember your layout. Okay? So show it to me and I'll tell you why I rejected it. Two, I follow this for the most part. Then I have a set of standards I personally follow when submitting a skin so I apply those to other people's skin's too. They are as follows.
----
- High quality, non-grainy image. A good sixth of the layouts I reject lack this. Even MS Paint can have good image quality.
- Nice, readable text and hyperlinks. If I can't read it, then how can anyone else?
- A fairly decent color scheme. Purple does not go with brown and there's too much contrast in red&black.
- A decent sized image. A 900KB image isn't very practical. Your main image shouldn't go over 500KB usually.
- A non-default layout. You can not stick in a background, change the colors,  and call it a day. Simplistic is good, but a layout like that will take you five minutes, tops. That's on a Myspace level to me. (Not including the div overlays!)
----
If you think that's too much to ask for, then that's too bad. Really, all I look for is a skin that looks decent and that has effort put into it. Cross-browser compatibility would be nice too.

Hm. Yeah, most of these rules are pretty much common sense...except for the image size. perhaps it should be added to the official rules mentioned here [ http://www.createblog.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=77054 ]. I didn't know about this link. I'm a big dumb butt for not even looking. Still I think they should put this link up on the page where people submit their skins. You know, for the dumb butts like me who think the only thing that matters is whats in front of them.

Another thing, that screen shot tip is really helpful! Thanx!