Hey Ray, looks good sir.
The whole real estate issue is a tough one that I appreciate, since you're designing for monitors of all sizes and systems of varying specs. For instance, I see you're a fan of frame-based, and there are still alot of overly paranoid people who refuse to view frames. But you have to draw the line somewhere, and you can't please everybody all of the time, that's the web for ya. I'm currently of the opinion that you can safely design for 1024x768, partially because the 8x6 people are used to scrolling all over hell anyways. I'm working on three sites right now, 2 are at around 1000 pixels wide, and one is at 780. I have a couple of friends that are also big fans of small interfaces like you, and they get plenty of work. White space and open space are powerful layout considerations as well, like on your Irish Divas site.
One thing I would encourage is avoiding horizontal scrolls whenever possible, like the content on your home page. Humans hate horizontal scrolls.
If I can throw out one other note, is the black background thing. It's a good thing to avoid usually imho. For instance I needed a dark bg on the
www.cscproducts.com site, and Sam wanted that color scheme of black & dark red, so I used a pattern to break up the black harshness. Color makes people feel things, and black isn't a good feeling, know what I mean? A pattern or texture can make a small interface feel larger.
Anyhow, I could go on all day about this stuff, but if I were to say anything of value to a guy jumping into design, it would be study layout and typography. Reading a book or two on typography really helped me. For layout, I look to areas outside the web for inspiration mostly, like print ads, magazine layouts, tv commercials, and ads for movies really rock. It's all much like playing an instrument. The trends and gizmos aren't what matters, it's how you make people feel.
I wanna give you a couple of links to designers who I look to as outstanding layerouters:
www.2advanced.com : a frames and flash kind of crew.
www.group94.com : clean defined.
www.24-7media.de : the photoshoppin' layout master.
A look thru their portfolios may give you some good vibrations.
Nice job Ray!
John
) I think it'll seem less claustrophobic when I get the sub pages formatted for that type of area. I may scrap that design if it bothers too many folks.
