revamped site

[Phisch]

I recently redid my site: http://www.mercedesmorgan.com

I would love to know what you think. It took forever and a day so I will try my best to brave the harder-to-hear criticism ;)

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(Sorry...this was in mrsrice22's cc on website thread by accident...didn't mean to thread-jack your post, mrsrice22!)

[crazyfoo]

looks great! I like the buttons on the side for Facebook and Twitter too, I've not seen that before. Did you create the icons that have the hand drawn look (facebook, tiwtter, email, RSS)?

[Phisch]

Thanks, Justin. The icons themselves I downloaded from somewhere a long time ago. It was from one of those sites that list "top 50 cool icons" or something like that :)

[Nookie Doodle]

Originally Posted by Phisch

I recently redid my site: Mercedes Morgan Photography Mercedes Morgan Photography provides warm, personal portrait and wedding photography in Austin, Central Texas and beyond

I would love to know what you think. It took forever and a day so I will try my best to brave the harder-to-hear criticism ;)

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(Sorry...this was in mrsrice22's cc on website thread by accident...didn't mean to thread-jack your post, mrsrice22!)

Hello Mercedes,

I think you did a fantastic job with your website. I enjoyed the aesthetics and it was easy to navigate around. Following would be my comments, however they are very minor.

1. I think it's a good rule of thumb to have external links such as your facebook and twitter buttons on the right hand side "open in a new window". This would allow your audience to access these specific pages and prevent them from having to hit the "back" button on their browser multiple times to get back to your site.

2. I was thrown off a bit by the "facebook" and "twitter" buttons on the left hand side as they are labeled similar to the buttons on the right side but function differently. I am not sure you even need these to be honest. Maybe track to see how many click-throughs you are getting from those buttons in comparison to the buttons on the right to weigh their worth?

3. This one is purely subjective (but what isn't with photography right?), your new site has such a nice organic hand made feel that it makes your current logo seem a bit out of place. Personally from looking at your site I would have expected a logo that looks a bit more hand drawn to match your overall brand aesthetic.

All in all, great job and I love your profile pic BTW.

[Phisch]

Thanks, Tam, for the feedback. I was concerned about the incongruity of the tabs, but I thought I'd keep them until Prophoto gives me the option to change them. Visually, they stick out. I may just go ahead and dump them. Thanks for the reminder about opening in a new window, I had forgotten to take care of that.

I am stuck on the logo issue. I was going to redraw my logo bug, but I wasn't so sure I wanted to. I love my font, I'm a sucker for Helvetica and clean and timeless and there are so many hand-drawn fonts out there, particularly for photographers. I will probably try anyway and see if it works.

[Nookie Doodle]

Originally Posted by Phisch

I am stuck on the logo issue. I was going to redraw my logo bug, but I wasn't so sure I wanted to. I love my font, I'm a sucker for Helvetica and clean and timeless and there are so many hand-drawn fonts out there, particularly for photographers. I will probably try anyway and see if it works.

I totally understand what you are saying Mercedes. I had the same issue with my logo because I love serif typefaces. My husband found a good medium by sketching some ornamental designs around the typeface and we are both happy with the end result. Check it out here - Houston Wedding Photographers - Nookie Doodle

A great resource I have found for great quality free fonts is dafont.com. Check them out, they have fonts for mac and pc's. Hope I was helpful.

[Phisch]

Thanks, I had heard of dafont.com, those are catch-as-catch-can in quality. I have a lot of fonts I bought from having a graphic design business so it was helpful to have that carry over to what I do now :)

[csa]

very cool. isn't scary/hard to put something out there you worked so hard on when people can be so snarky sometimes. i liked how it wasn't just same ol/same ol.

[Phisch]

Thank you.

People can be snarky but I have to learn how to suck it up and deal :)