Website Design

Hey guys I started a desgin for my website. It is at: http://www.paragonbeats.com . Let me know what you guys think of the layout and if you have any suggestions. Thanks.

It's pretty unpractical at the moment. The content area has an image of a turntable behind it, a nice idea I grant you, but in your head your design is always going to be viewed as you designed it, but in the harsh reality of the web, people will be viewing your design at many sizes due to resolution. Therefore a picture such as the turntable is pretty redundant unless it's also scalable to each resolution.

Not much point in the copyright notice either, you have used it more as a vanity thing rather than a useful or informative device.

Logotype is a little unclear at the moment too. Your URL is paragonbeats but your logotype is paragon, I presume you have something to do with music and probably urban music of some description, however, don't make the user guess, spell it out!

The overall design of the background is leaving me cold. It says nothing and adds nothing to your overall theme or concept. Colours are fine for me - are they fine for your intended audience? What's the idea behind your scheme?

I would be tempted to make your site more dynamic, perhaps a more magazine or e-zine look would be more suitable to the content you have. Certainly you could look to Independant labels and established record labels for inspiration too.

Let me trawl a few faves for your inspiration..............

www.article19.co.uk - this is a great dude from the Computer Arts website and forum, it's my secret favourite website in a while and it always evolves in logical steps. I must confess it's a minor pimp of a friend by association of where I hang out on the web, but I do genuinely love the clean design and organised content alongside logical navigation.

www.newstoday.com - a more modern scheme but could have benefits if content is daily....

www.scene360.com - again the design speaks for itself, it's clean and effective with a punch and vitality that I presume a site like yours would need.

Well you did ask! ;)

Yeh Im a producer I understand what your saying..Those pictures on the top and bottom bars are pictures of vinyl on shelves. THe url is paragonbeats cuz paragon.com wasn't available. I go by paragon so maybe i should have beats in another style than paragon? Also what should i do for navigation? Those buttons look kind plain. ALso for the contnet, I was planning on using a Iframe or something and use CSS to make only text scroll and not the image. THanks