design opinions

http://www.ashwebstudio.com/soma/

There are 3 files in the directory. One is an "intro" image which will be basically what the index page will look like. The other two are two designs for the main layout with only one difference...the "coming shows" section on the left.

This is going to be a site for a local concert venue that hosts mostly punk rock shows. However, they are also going to rent out their space (HUGE hall that holds 2500+ people) for corporate events.

The people I am designing this for said they wanted to stick to their color pallette of dark gray, dark red, blue, purple. I totally threw that away and made something else (as you can see). They also said they didn't want it to be corporate looking or have any straight lines. I think I at least achieved those. They said they were looking for a "cool, hip" site that isn't your typical looking site. The fact that the guy used the word "hip" told me he doesn't know what "cool" is anymore. They want it fun and interesting, while also being professional enough so other professional companies will do business with them.

So, with those FEW requirements, I have come up with that design. My first original design didn't have any of the blue or red in the grunge area, but they insisted it have some of their "dark colors" in there somewhere. Does the blue/red work? Also, the images at the top are going to change (except for the "chat" one). They said the current images were a little too "serious", so to try and find some different ones. If you have any ideas for them, let me know. I can't seem to find some "fun" images that fit. They thought the kid with half his teeth missing and mouth wide open was perfect, so think in that realm.

If you have any advice/comments, good or bad, please let me know. I appreciate any help you give. Thanks for reading this huge post.

I like them a lot, all of'em Very artsy and goodlookin layouts! Thumbs up!

All are very nice - but the navigation nfont which you have used isnt very clear for me to read - but then again - i havent got the best eyesight in the world

Good job m8

Well, the intro page really reminds me of Qtone's splash page - http://qtone.sidez.net

Looks like you took inspiration from a few sites. Qtone, One26 and some other grunge sites around here. I'm not saying its bad or anything, you should try another way to do grunge. Just being honest.

Oh ya.. The title on the top left reminds me of my dedication page. Probably just coincidence

Thats litttle inspiration from Qtone's site...I think he did a good job with it, he simply applied "the" grunge style to a client site. I feel it looks good, either of the two work, I can't decide which better.

There's nothing wrong with inspiration. Its a fine job, just need some fine tuning. Change those text for the navigation to black, cause white doesn't really contrast with the images. A little hard to read.

Thanks for all the feedback. I did see Qtone's site and also one26 (he uses my PHP/MySQL news script). I tried not to copy them, but I guess the intro is pretty close to Qtone's. However, it will be a Flash thing when it's done. When you rollover the image, it does a little animation like a almost-broken-but-barely-working-TV would do (blink, scroll, a little static, etc.).

However, the design will probably be scraped now. The client just called me and said "There are a few things I think we should change. First off, we need to get rid of the tan. I want to use one of our colors, probably the dark blue, as the background." Well, this style does not work with a dark blue design. Only techy like designs, which they want to completely avoid, work with a dark blue background (at least that I have seen). I am meeting with the owner's wife tomorrow and I'm going to work on it in front of her to show her why it doesn't work.

Oh well. I may use this for one of my own sites :rolleyes:

Those seemingly sloppy black lines are getting progressively annoying each time I view the images. Maybe a substitute for those because it doesn't seem to have that same grungy-feel as the rest of the site.

i am getting bored with grunge to be honest

I don't frequent a lot of sites with it, so its "new" to me. This is the first time I have ever tried using it myself. So, ya.

I tried changing the letters for the nav to black and that made it worse. I don't know how to really get those to stand out more. Maybe a different font would work better.