I'm looking for ideas and inspiration

[PPettit]

I've been given the task of changing my company's website (

http://www.dixielectric.com)

from a single page to something more useful and informative.

Unfortunately, I am not a web designer or even remotely artistic. The website right now is pretty much just "blah". I wanted to make it load quickly so I've used very little graphics and focused mostly on CSS. I do plan on adding some photos of our buildings, workers, and products at some point, but no one has provided me with anything usable, yet.

One of the main things that bothers me is the overall color scheme. Our company logo is red, white, and blue so I tried to work that into the overall design. It's just not doing anything for me and I can't come up with a color scheme that "works".

Basically, I'm suffering from a creativity denial-of-service attack. I need some ideas or inspiration. So far, googling aimlessly hasn't helped much.

 

[jazz88]

Color scheme depends on you layout and images you're going to use. One of the best ways to find a good color scheme is this: scan in an object, for example a metallic knife, the enlarge it so that you see pixels. Then you can choose several grey tones that will be your color scheme. Real life objects are the best and tones will always match and you get really sophisticated tones. In your particular case I'd go with either grey or navy. Grey could be a good choice: metallic, silver, brushed metal objects, try to use textures etc. Well, I'm trying to inspire you.

 

[jazz88]

Try this color combination: background: #333333 menu: #D5CD95 and accent color if you need it: #EFBE4E With this combination your logo shouldn't be too large.
Cheers!

 

[Zandor435]

If you are familiar with CSS, I would check out

http://www.csszengarden.com

for some options to look at.

I am no expert, but for my personal site I took a site from cssZenGarden.com and changed the color scheme. Good luck.

Zach

-----------------

http://www.ZacharyMorgan.com

 

[ChrisHunt]

Be aware that the original designers retain their copyright on Zen Garden designs, so if you copy them too closely you may find yourself in legal trouble.

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[harrymossman]

I think it is a darn good site. There's nothing blah about it - the header is bold and attractive. Hey, it's an electrical company. All the site really has to be is usable, which it is.

If your company colors are red, white and blue, stick with them. Company identity is far more important than having cool colors.

Harry

 

[PPettit]

Thanks for the suggestions and feedback, guys.

I've finally gotten a few minutes to upload a few minor but noticeable changes. I think the site looks a lot less "cartoonish" now. I'm still struggling to get my hands on pictures of our work, though.

There's one thing that still bothers me. The jagged quality of the logo.

I've got Photoshop 7 but I just can't seem to get the logo to look any better while keeping the background transparent. Most of the problem is probably because I have very little clue as to how to actually use PS. If you haven't noticed, the photo is set via CSS and the logo is set via HTML. I'm thinking that the only way to make the logo look smoother is to forget the tranparent background and combine it with the photograph in PS. I should be able to use more colors which will make the image appear smoother, right?

 

[jazz88]

To avoid "jagged" look you should place the logo in PS over the image and save as jpg.

 

[ChrisHunt]

More to the point, to make a less jaggy version of the logo, start with a version several times bigger than you need. Then resize it down for a smoother look.

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd