Designers For Darfur

Hello,

Due to the crisis in a certain city located in Western Sudan, also
known as Darfur 15,000* people die every month. Designers for Darfur
hosts fashion shows and events using fashion as an outlet to bring
awareness to the situation. I would like everyone to take a look at
the site, opinions and/or participation is greatly appreciated.

http://www.designersfordarfur.org

*(International Coalition for Justice)

Im not a great fan of flash but it is a stunning design
My only critism is that the readable content is too far down the page. So when i click on one of the links a stunning image is displayed in the centre however without scrolling down the page i would never had known there was something to actually read.

Your biggest problem however is a complete lack of any Keywords or Meta Content on any page which, considering your plight is a major problem.

Hiya,

I think this is a very nice looking website. As AnsUK already said, you may need to look into meta content.

A couple of thoughts:

• For a Flash site you have a big number of external links, and - as AnsUK said - they are not fully obvious as to how far they are still integrated to the website and where you are sending your visitors away to other sites without actually conveying your message
• All content pages have a lot of copy, but only limited space to display it, which means scrolling. I would maybe extend the copy-area or go outside of Flash and only use Flash for the images and the header, so that the content is displayed as plain text, which would help on the SEO-front of things
• I am not and never was a fan of music playing on a website without me actually clicking on the speaker or pressing play. I travel a lot and commute a lot, as such I am usually never alone or in an area where music coming from a website would be appreciated. I would maybe look into that or start the music on volume 0 and only gradually increase the volume
• Newsletter signup - not sure if putting it below the content area is the best spot for it. Maybe look into moving it to the right hand side
• Gallery - only problem I have with it are the loading times and the fact that it doesn't use the same template as the main site and is not center-aligned, which would tie it into the main site a bit more.

Overall I do like the site, I am not sure if Flash-only is the right medium for it though. As I said earlier, I would be inclined to use Flash for the gallery and the header only, and use plain html / asp / php / whatever you prefer for the rest of the site. It would certainly allow you to add more content and sections more easily and your content would be crawlable and search engine relevant.

Kind regards,
ALEX

__________________
Alexander Rehm - Web Architect
Portfolio | What was I thinking?

I like the site - the colours and balance make for a very effective design. The only suggestion I have is that the content, being all in caps, is hard to read. It would probably be better if you changed it so that it was not completely uppercase letters.

The site is well done. I won't comment on the flash issues, I think we all know them, and they have already been discussed. Here is what I noticed when navigating the site.

• When I first loaded the site, the text area was empty. That may have just been my computer, but it may happen to others as well.
• Definite readability issue with your chosen font. I may try a bolder font, or play around with the attributes of that one.
• Your links on your navigation column don't really have a definite hover action. Maybe something a little larger and more noticeable. Users have grown accustomed to seeing something happen when the mouse interacts with a link. The music, bookmarks, and legal notices all change color on hover. Maybe you could incorporate this into the navigation column also. Keeping a more unified feel.
• The text box could use some up and down arrows

Other than those items, the site is done rather well. Nice Work!

Scott