Outspoken-Kate.com
It makes me feel uneasy when I'm typing in a URL such as "pretty-ashley.com" or "awesome-angela.net". What sort of feelings should I have towards this website and the owner when all the creativity they possess is adding an adjective before their name?
I'll try to avoid the tear flow and possible hoards of hatemail to my inbox and just say that your website design is pretty good, but messy. Upon entering I had to concentrate to find 'outspoken-kate', only to find it buried beneath dozens of brushes on the design. I have 20/20 vision over here with my +90000 prescription contact lens, so it's not really me that's the problem. The design becomes weakened by your mediocre font choice that does nothing to compliment it. Whether it's a stroke or an outer glow, that green bit around the font is not attractive at all. Your font is acting as a burden on your 'could-be-nice' design. If you're going for something abstract or simple, use a serif/sans serif typeface. Helvetica LT Std would love you, I'm sure. Don't go crazy with fancy fonts when creating abstract/simple designs.
There's no reason why you should have to repeat your website name two more times underneath, I'm pretty sure anyone over the brain cell amount of seven will know that they are on the correct website. I suppose you might have added that in an attempt of design, but it's really not doing much besides making my eyes hurt.
Your layout seems to be a bit overwhelming at first glance. It looks like it takes up too much valuable blog/content space (height wise) that a visitor could potentionally be attracted too. Be careful with how much space your header takes.
Little coherency between your coding, css and design causes a sense of tackiness. A nice header graphic should not excuse the lack of a solid color scheme! I quickly become lost in all the different hues and tints of brown that have no business being there in the first place. Viewing your comment section, I wonder if you even bothered to color code anything deriving from your actual design. I'm seeing a pink and green that look like they actually come from the design, but every other color code you have (ie. #FFFFFF) appears to be the result of a gerbil learning to use a keyboard for the first time.
Just because your design has a lot of colors, does not mean you have to implement all of them into your css. Don't be afraid to re-use colors! If you have a header color that looks good as a text link hover, use it!
Pick colors that work. For the best results, use your color dropper. (Thought this was obvious, but it's okay I'll say it out loud anyway)
Right now, I'm just trying to figure out where the 1px reddish brown solid border dividing the sidebar and the blog has come from.
Speaking of that line, I don't know why it's even there! (Yes, it's possible that such a small line could annoy the hell out of someone enough to speak so dearly about it - and give them nightmares) In both your blog and sidebar headers you have bottom borders, these borders are already defining the space which rules out the use of that middle line, to seperate the blog and sidebar. Get rid of that line and we're cool.
You focus so much on the header that your coding and color selection seem like one of your of last concerns. That is a problem. Websites should look good with or without the use of a header. Do not put all the dependency of appeal on your header. Without coding that compliments the header, your main design will not look attractive.
Why you dedicated a space in your main navigation to a 100x100 (whatever size it may be) popup for music will forever puzzle me. I don't understand the importance of having music or players on websites when there are bigger and more obvious approaches like youtube and itunes. If you have a song you like, post the link or name in your blog. You could do without the music link! That will free up some space in your navigation and maybe then you can remove the unappealing pale pink rollovers that again, do not compliment your [non-existent] color scheme. Oh, and before we exit navigation land, maybe a wording change from CLEAR to HOME would be more appropriate?
The entire statistics bit in the sidebar is useless and repetitive. You have a contact link in your sidebar and footer. Ditch the one on the sidebar and keep the one in your footer. All your other information such as when the site was created can be merged onto pages within "the site". About the Site and The Name could also easily be merged.
Woah wait did I just see that you have a page dedicated to your dog? Well....hmm...I suppose if I had a hamster who treated me well I would...ah, no, I wouldn't.
A very uncomfortable, empty space isolates your sidebar headers and sub-content...and I'm curious to know if this space is intentional. The headers and content are just too far apart, bringing the header and content closer together will make the sidebar look more organized and unified, instead of looking like random words thrown together with bolded headers here and there.
Can you explain to me the thought process behind the purple header color and red brown border? It's not working for me - or Bernard, you know the pink bunny waving hello in the picture above. Damnit, who let him out of the box with the plastic wrap?
Content? There seems to be a slight disregard for the people who use your brush image packs. I'm pretty sure if I gave you one of your own brush imagepacks even you wouldn't be able to convert it, let alone properly cut out one of the brushes. Somewhere along the second brush set you must've gotten too lazy to make them croppable cause there's just no way someone can cut these things out and use them properly without having a seizure, quitting graphic design or only cutting out half of the brush they wanted. Or maybe I'm just wrong and the brushes are meant to be strangely stamped on top of each other as one big...power brush? Yea, here we go. I knew everything here had a logical reasoning behind it. I included a picture I contrasted a bit so you can see how majorly strange this brush pack looks. I don't want to have to come up with a strategy just to cut out these brushes.
What in the hell...??! Okay, seriously, Bernard - get out of my screenies.
Mozilla Firefox and I are kinda on bad terms so I've been using IE to view your misaligned bullets and links. Fix that, please? Oh and also, that header color is bugging me.
Thoughts: Overall, your website doesn't enthuse me. Your designs have been stronger, but your coding seems to just keep dragging you down. I would suggest brushing up on matching colors with your css and common organization with your coding before continuing on with your website. With the right coding, fonts and colors, your website could be looking much better.
Final Grade: So I'm giving you a C, but that's mostly because I just found a Chris Crocker song on your music player. You could've had a B. :(