Griffin Web Design - New Year, New Design. Penny for your thoughts!

Well it a new year and I thought I would do a re-design, out with the old and in with the new and all that!

It's still in 'beta' stage so there mite be a couple things a miss.

Any comments on what you think would be greatly appriciated.

ps Just want to say a big thankyou to anyone who left comments on my first design, you helped me mould it and I got in one of my favorite mags .NET.

anyway here's the link http://www.griffinwebdesign.co.uk/

What's to say. It's beautiful. well done

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That is a great site, my only slight worry is that the text on the services and about page is too small.

I would also change the logo slightly so that the "web design" is in red (like you had before) as this will bring it some emphasis.

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Excellent site. Really slick looking.

Only problems are your headings... They're images. I viewed the site with no CSS and it wasn't all there.

Get those in there not only for accessibility but for better SEO.

WOTM - easy.

This is excellent -- a gorgeous site. Well done!

Home page: you have three columns of text, but the spacing is not even.

I don't think the Flash image swap is working well for you. You only have two images, and I think the first (red person) is much stronger than the second (sharpened moon). I would either ditch the Flash and use the first image, or put some more work into secondary/tertiary Flash images.

As Dan said, get some real headings! Nothing wrong with images, but make sure the text exists too -- either with alt text (my preferred method), or using one of the text replacement methods (sacrifices some accessibility).

And since these images are content (images of text), they should be <img>s not CSS backgrounds. CSS backgrounds are for decorative images. (But that would change if you included standalone text instead.)

I think you should focus now on building your portfolio. Easier said than done, I know. It would be good to have enough content so you can split it into categories (websites, logos...).

One thing I found odd: you list Andy Shaw's website on your portfolio, but the image shows that he designed your website! I am driven to deduce that you are Andy Shaw. Is that correct?

If so, I think this little subterfuge lessens your credibility. Don't make people suspicious!

Seeing as his username is shawzy, I think you might be right there Sherlock Hopley.

minute44 lol, Yeah I'm Andy Shaw. Great advice I'll get too it and let you know when I've finished.

Love it, but as Mike suggested just use the image of the red man, no flash!

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Erm guys.... That aint flash

All right, javascript. Movey-fadey stuff.

I knew that and was just testing you. You Passed!

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lol Jack, yeah I think it will be better if it has like 4 images instead of 2. I'm going to keep it because I think that the 'normal' person looking at the site mite think its kinda cool even though us in the know mite think its a bit gimmicky (is that a word) or not so good.

Really nice website... I really do think http://www.griffinwebdesign.co.uk/lib/i/tagBanner.gif should be replaced by text! Your loosing masses of page relativeness from having this image... would be a perfect H1!

What I dont get though is how the footer font is different to the rest of the website!

The sub header text is all images..... that would be why could you not go for something like Tahoma or Trebuchet MS?

Lovely website, the spoil of it is the over-use of images which totally kills the site with images turned off!

and also Doesn't make sense to me

Simply add alt text to the images, and the problem is solved.

Sure that solves that, and then what about when a customer comes to resize text... then it fails!

If the "text" in question is already large (headers, and so on), then this is not such a big issue.

There's a balance to be struck: images-for-text are crisper and offer more design choices; but real text is the most accessible.

I prefer real text, but images-for-text are acceptable if alt text is specified.