New Site

[le pire]

[gazzo osborne]

Get the fat man out of the photo

[le pire]

we're not talking about your website, Gazzo.

[Seamus]

The site looks good. The photos are especially notable. You may want to make the thumbnails on the gallery page larger. They seemed too small on my monitor and I'm running at 1024 wide resolution, which is I gather the lower end of the resolution scale these days. But that is a rather minor criticism, overall it looks good.

[Daniel Zindler]

The branding on this website needs lots of work. The logo (or title) doesn't look great. You should re-do this and keep the font used for the buttons different from the title font. Your color scheme matches but it is a hard combo to look at. Rollovers should make a noticable change or none at all. Hope this helps man! Otherwise I think the layout is Great.

Daniel

[scot]

agreed with daniel.

The title looks an american trash can company or something. Find a better font for the title and don't use the straight band of color. Horizontal stripes represent security, professional, business, boring. Blue says the same thing.

It's a good start -- esp. the photos.

[le pire]

Thanks guys,

but I disagree completely with both of you.

- security, professional, business-- that is EXACTLY what we are going for.

-more than two fonts on a page, inmho, looks jumbled

-color scheme is great.

- rollovers could be more distinct, however.

Thanks for the input!


etienne

[Evan Young]

Hey, I am really impressed with the pictures, and the bio, and general layout. but I do think the title could be improved on... and colors (blue and orange is fine, but somthing in some of the blue seems dull). but in general... it rocks.

[scot]

yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com/),
msn (http://www.msn.com) ,
The Onion (http://www.theonion.com)

all seem to disagree with yho. If you want to keep it to 2 fonts, you should change the title font. It's too weak.

I'll tell you again-- the stripes are ugly and too straight.

Wavy lines will add more energy and green elements will add vitality.

I thought you posted the site for crits.

[le pire]

Scot,

I appreciate your feedback. Those sites you point out for examples are a search engine, catch-all info page, and a satirical news journal. Seeing as I'm putting together an "on line brochure," I stand by my original statement-- two fonts, no more. And sure, sure, there's an exception to every rule, so I'm certain you can find a site with 6 fonts that works just really well.


The font in this site is meant to be very conservative- boring by your standards - because I don't wish the font to take away from what it important: photos and text. I don't really want a visitors eyes to get stuck at the header. They gleen the info needed then move on.

The energy and vitality come from the photos and the text, which is exactly where a visitor should be looking. I want a visitor to find the information they need as quickly and cleanly as possible and be dazzled by the substance not the style.

Just like it is a choice to be heavily stylized, it's also a choice to be conservative in design.

Thanks again for the criticism.


etienne

[Mark Wessels]

Yo E,

new site looks great. You call your show a symphony on the homepage and on the show page. may be a choice, just seems strange to me. the photo on the bio page sticks out from the rest of the site kind of glaringly to me. I know it's professional but it's kind of scary.

Use my comments if you want, no need to debate them. I don't know much about web design.

Mark

[worldwidese]

I think that although your pics are tremendous, the site design is rather "plain jane". I would like to see a little more excitement at least in an entry portal.
But it is concise, clean, informative and easy to navigate, except- it would be helpful to a client wishing to contact you if you made your email address a link.

[Doctor Eric]

You should listen more.

Scot and Daniel are both dead on. Your design can remain "conservative" (aren't your photos a bit too odd to truly qualify as "conservative"?), and still utilize their suggestion. My opinion, keep the box, throw out the header. The gradients and diffuse glow in it don't fit anyway, and that straight stripe thing is way too Fed-Ex, conveying motion and energy would do nothing but help your design. I don't like the way the vector illo looks with the site either, it doesn't fit. The bottom navigation is redundant, your design is, for the most part, sharp and clean, those h-links at the bottom are like nutritional information on bottles of water. Three fonts is fine, just do it correctly, and it will sharpen everything right up.

My big issue is the ego; this site, like almost all performer sites, is bloated with it, trying to soften that blow would help, and it's a constant battle with all of our promo. One idea is to replace some of the shots of your mug with shots of your props, all lonely, waiting for you too come play with them. Less ego, a little tension, "where oh where is etienne, we are all here ready for him...", I think it's a rather good idea, actually.

Another thing, index page=one big photo, what you have now is confusing, too much info at once. The photo on the bio page sticks out like a highchair in a whorehouse, plus, it looks like you're auditioning for a mexican soap opera. Get rid of it, no ifs, ands, or buts.

Your design remains very tight until the reviews page, where you have thrown out all rules of design, and declared war on my visual ability, I would type more about that, but I'm still waiting for my eyes to un-cross.

Another note about branding. Are you the only guy that is veryfunny? You need a better URL, the one you have is generic and forgettable. I would recommend www.ericcash.com.

Oh, yeah. This always sticks in my craw. YOU. ARE. NOT. WHITESNAKE. Why do performers insist on selling T-Shirts? You aren't going to move enough units to make it worthwhile. If you are going to have a shop, sell something people want. Otherwise, don't bother.

There are a couple other minor technical things, the photo page breaks the design, and doesn't look right. You should fix that.

Other than that, I like it, it's very tight and readable for the most part.

Oh, yeah. Don't be so stubborn once you've asked for crits, so far, you've gotten nothing but good advice.

[Steven Ragatz]

My two cents:

Less time on the site (it's good enough), more time on the videos (would only hire you for a cafe or small banquettes).

Steven Ragatz

[le pire]

Thanks for the advice guys,

yeah, the videos suck BIG TIME. They're many many years old and desperately need to be replaced. It will happen soon.

the bio pic really blows, hands down. You're absolutely right.

I may not be white snake, but I sold 33 t shirts last week on a cruise ship so it was worth bringing the box of them on board.

veryfunny.com has worked REALLY well for me. It has been anything but forgetable and besides, ericcash.com is taken. Although I probably get a lot of traffic from surfers looking for a joke site.

I like the "lonely props" idea and I'll see what I can do with it...


etienne

[scot]

This discussion started with the usa breakdancers site. Et removed that link and now everyone's criting his site, but the crits are the same (except the fat guy thing).