School Signs website

Hi

One of my clients has a sign making company and I have already created a website for that, but now they wanted a site specifically targeting schools, which make a large part of their business. The brief was moving too far into a kind of childish, clownish site, their understanding was that schools, in particular primary schools, like cartoon characters and very bright colours (you can start to imagin my look when they wanted a site like that). I eventually managed to persuade them that when looking for a supplier they are looking for a company which looks professional, they might prefer bright colourful signs for their schools but that did not apply when it came to sourcing their suppliers.

In the end the site is a mix of bright colours whilst in keeping with a professional feel. I don't think any schools use blackboards and chalk any more but I wanted the header to be a reminder of those days so a dark grey background was chosen and a chalk effect font worked perfectly for headings.

http://www.schoolsigns.biz/index.htm

Fun if not a bit juvenile (in a good way of course :))

Then my goal has been achieved, thank you? :confused:

I think the chalk effect looks good on the large black banner, but on the rest of the headings it doesn't look good to me especially the coloured ones. Other than that the site looks great.

Thank you Frances. I wanted to keep all headings text the same. I believe in the two font principle, one for body and one for headings, in this case the main headings in the header are the chalk font. Having a different font for the smaller headings did not fit in with this theory and it just did not look nice either, hence the same font for all headings.

I like how you've moderated a good balance of different colours into the site (something that I'm sure can be easily overdone). The busyness of contrasts and colour in the slideshow pics on the top bar are nicely contained within the grey surrounding it so as to present well while not disturbing the rest of the site. The products pages are quite informative with a comfortable sized easy to read body font, I'm sure Signs Direct are pleased with it.

Site looks great. The one thing I would do is put a little...very little delay in the nav bar when you hover over. But either way looks great. Nice and clean.

Thank you Arpeggio and 'him. Unfortunately 'him, that is a drawback of the mouseovers on xara, the other way to put any sort of delay would probably be to use layers and the fade link transition, but that would just complicate things.

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Originally Posted by skech

but that would just complicate things.

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That would depend how much of a hurry you're in.

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That would depend how much of a hurry you're in.

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;)

Also on the clients budget :D

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Originally Posted by skech

Also on the clients budget :D

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Very true, very true. :thx

The home page slider moves way to fast. I thing xara has a slider that you can set the timing for. Its not on all of them but i am pretty sure there is one.

'him, The slider I use has a full timing feature on slides, but you have to grab peoples attention and the slider is sat to (if I remember correctly) 2 seconds for the first slide and 2.5 for the rest.

When you have text on a slider it is ok to leave it on to give site visitors a chance to read the text, but for photos that is not important, hence a shorter time between slides (it's all about teasing the visitor)

I think that skech produces the very best websites I have seen in any of our Xara forums. They are consistently clean, well designed and informative and I am absolutely certain any potential client cannot fail to be impressed. They are 'of a certain style' that is his own, yet each website is individual, very difficult to produce as many times as he does. Not only are they good examples of Xara-driven websites, they are just good websites, full-stop, period.
One thing I would like to point out to skech, and this happens a lot with me when I review his designs, is that the slideshows never work on my Chrome browser. I don't realise sometimes, as I would not know some of them WERE slideshows, but on this design someone queried the speed of transitions and I investigated further. After experimenting, I find it is AdBlock stopping the slideshows from running. This NEVER happens with my own websites, as I can test them outside of my own LAN and AdBlock never stops them running. I wonder what it is we are doing different that this happens with his designs and not with mine? And, is he missing out on the potential of his sites being seen as more static than he intended, as I do not know anyone who does NOT use AdBlock and does this happen to them too?
I wish I could be a tenth as good as skech with web design and look forward to any new ones he showcases and I look forward to any discussion we have with this small issue.

Thanks Andy. I am aware of the problem with adblock as are the guys over at snacktools (they make the sofware) and hopefully something will be done sooner rather than later. I have not received any complaints from the clients themselves and certainly no one has reported problems to them either. Just need xara to have a more extensive slideshow widget will can be resized at any ratio.

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Originally Posted by andymack

I do not know anyone who does NOT use AdBlock and does this happen to them too?

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I deal with home users all the time and maybe, just maybe, 5% of them are Adblock users before I get to them, the rest have no idea another browser than IE exists and those that do don't realise you can block website adverts. Most people I go to see or who bring their computers in don't realise that the Internet is available within a browser and they think that the Internet and Google are one and the same thing.

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Originally Posted by skech

Just need xara to have a more extensive slideshow widget will can be resized at any ratio.

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I use Hippo Animator for all my website animations - I know I seem to be flogging it to death whenever anybody mentions non-Flash wensite animation, but I really think it's the best thing since sliced bread and it's so cheap it's ridiculous. There's just a learning curve, a bit like the first time you used Flash (and not dissimilar, in fact) You can create you own custom slider(s) from scratch and thereafter you can change them easily. Obviously this includes changing the dimensions, overall speed as well as speed of individual frames plus a whole lot more.
Ok, I've done this to death now, if you're interested: http://hippostudios.co.uk

You know I actually looked at this but for some reason never got round to it. But the thing is that I pay £60 odd per year for a snacktools VIP account and that gives me some many things (banners, photo gallaries (html5) videos players, audio players, flipbooks etc etc so i tend to use that quite a bit but will check out the hippo site. Thanks

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Originally Posted by Big Frank

Ok, I've done this to death now, if you're interested: http://hippostudios.co.uk

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Frank thanks for that link it is quite inspiring. Anyway once also for Xara it would be a good direction to contain functions to create HTML5 animations

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Originally Posted by csehz

Anyway once also for Xara it would be a good direction to contain functions to create HTML5 animations

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I hope they are listening. Or maybe they should just pay Hippo Studios and buy their HTML5 engine :thx

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