Swan Valley Winery Site & Swan Valley Accommodation

Here are the second and fourth sites I made using Xara. I used the typo template for both of them. It is an easy to use template, although it doesn't seem to like full font justify too much on Explorer and Opera so I changed one of them but not the winery site. I don't like the gaps between the words (like a trail) when it is fully justified, so one day I will pull this one done and left justify. Mind you, I'm not too keen on that either as it looks a bit messy, but apparently the eye follows better whilst reading and scanning left justify than in full justify. The accommodation people are friends of the winery people and neither of them noticed that their sites had the same formats until I pointed it out to them. I guess the average person doesnt look at things like that, but I certainly can see they are the same! I don't use templates anymore, but I still pull aspects of them into designs.

Winery Site www.edgecombebrothers.com.au
Accommodation site www.grandiscottages.com.au

I am starting a web design course in February which is full time for a year. I am hoping to improve my design skills, learn coding, and get out of the house! Yay...

Gorgeous. Instead of learning you should be teaching. :)

Gorgeous indeed! I enjoyed the photos on both sites, but I think the Koala on the things to do page of the cottages site was my favourite :)

Superb! nice one abi as we say here, ditto gwpriester - wish my buttons worked like that! ;)

Ray

Nice earthy brown for the edgecombe brothers site, almost implies just plucked from ground fresh.

I really like the first site:

it is clean and simple, and the color combination is really good to watch!

But the second is also very nice!

Two very good sites, very good use of colours and layout. If I had to choose I would say the grandis cottages site was my favourite, very clean and easy to use. Just one point; I was looking at the grandis site and thought that you could actually set the page width wider (I think you have it at 955px) most people have higher resolutions these days (if you have google analytics set-up then just look at the visitor's monitor resolutions) I would say widen the width to 1100 or so and it would look brilliant and very professional as you would then have more white space within the content

Thank you for your kind comments. Skech the grandis site may be in limbo as the owners have done so well since the site went up that they have decided to sell the business while they have fully paid future bookings, which looks good on the books from a selling point of view. The new owners may wish to continue with the site, or they may get a new one (from someone else!?). If they continue with the site I will definitely do as you suggest as I can see your point regarding the width. Cheers Abi BTW, its b%$$#y hot here in the Perth hills today - 41C and a hot dry wind...phew!! no website building today (I don't have airconditioning).