New website
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Very nice Paul. Easy to navigate.
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Nice clean site Paul, though the font is rather large on a desktop, though sweet on a mobile, these can often be ! There is some serious loading lag (here is Aust anyway - our hampsters are lazy), this could be due to the large number of transitions you have, as I understand these are seriously taxing on load! Could also be the use of a large background image! I'm not really seeing a need for that to be blunt.
The "services" icons for me are just that bit gimmicky for what is obviously a well accomplished Architectural practice! Whilst they contain some really very funky transitions, my bet is that this is where the load lag is born of. Personally I'd prefer static well designed (architectural) icons with a title even if then the text expands out on hover rather then a pop up text bubble.
It's one of those things I battle with in my site designs, funky transitions v's faster load! A SEO guy I've been working with of late continues to hammer me on the importance of fast load!!!!
The projects section IMHO is a little overwhelming, I'd probably pull a few "best" projects whilst being contrasting styles as featured, with the option to open more. As many of the projects are similar, which I find appealing that you have a style, I'm probably as much questioning if you may lack vision to create beyond that style! This is probably also the cause of the "overwhelm" - I start to wonder if these are repetitious.
The little circle on the project tiles for me are unnecessary and even polluting what is otherwise clean. I'd rather here a clean title and brief summary!
The news section is just that bit untidy with the use of smaller thumbs with varied image styles.
Hope you don't mind the crit mate? I like the site and loved checking out the projects - it is for me just a few tiny things that would take it from a good site to a GREAT site!
BTW what platform did you use to build your site?
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Thanks for the Comments Richard,
I’ve had a fiddle and changed some things:
Fonts are a little smaller on large monitors, It’s always a toss up between font size, words per line and content width. I’m using 4 sizes / 3 breakpoints and I’d rather have largish fonts than too many words per line or too narrow a content area.I reprocessed the images used in the header(s) through https://tinypng.com
If you haven’t used it yet its remarkable how much it can squeeze png’s and jpg’sI’ve also limited the header to 7 random images (from 30) instead of the full 30 - that was stupid of me not to put in the limit.
The Services icons are pure CSS and are remarkably fast, have a look here at some of my tests http://www.sandbox.russam.me/wilburys
I’ll look again at the number of projects on the Projects page, It’s a common mistake I make in that I try to list everything instead of what is important.
The site is built with Rapidweaver + Stacks + Foundation + a bucket load of other add ons
The site is fully CMS’d so I can add /modify projects any time.Thanks again,
Paul
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@paul russam said:
Fonts are a little smaller on large monitors, It’s always a toss up between font size, words per line and content width. I’m using 4 sizes / 3 breakpoints and I’d rather have largish fonts than too many words per line or too narrow a content area.
Mate, I'm still finding the font largish on my desktop, I know whilst you say you don't want too much text maybe you could put the text to two columns and introduce some more H1/H2 headings.
@unknownuser said:
I reprocessed the images used in the header(s) through https://tinypng.com
If you haven’t used it yet its remarkable how much it can squeeze png’s and jpg’sI use tinypng often, the results are amazing, minijpg is also brilliant, if your images are in PNG it might be worth converting to JPG to save some size.
@unknownuser said:
I’ve also limited the header to 7 random images (from 30) instead of the full 30 - that was stupid of me not to put in the limit.
Yeah holy crap, 30 is silly thinking mate, I'd even say three is enough as your scrolling down instantly anyway!!! The page is loading MUCH faster!!
@unknownuser said:
The Services icons are pure CSS and are remarkably fast, have a look here at some of my tests http://www.sandbox.russam.me/wilburys
I did read an article on the Webflow blog about speeding page load, CSS transitions are one of the things they suggested to limit to speed load. Mate despite them being clever, I'll still hold and reinforce my view that these are out of style with an architectural practice!!! I'd prefer beautifully styled icons!!! I've done a similar treatment on my own (under development STILL duh) page with icons and titles to deal with services, might give some thoughts (maybe not) http://builtbrand.webflow.io/ and here is another page where I've stylised icons to have some meaning http://sipform.com.au/.
@unknownuser said:
I’ll look again at the number of projects on the Projects page, It’s a common mistake I make in that I try to list everything instead of what is important.
Maybe bring two projects featured to the top, and then rows of four under, BTW again that little circle is polluting them
@unknownuser said:
The site is built with Rapidweaver + Stacks + Foundation + a bucket load of other add ons
The site is fully CMS’d so I can add /modify projects any time.Wow, that's a great deal knowledge cranked into one site mate, well done!!! I've been sticking with Webflow, love the editor and CMS system!! I changed over from squarespace as it's been turning to crap. I don't know enough about to be doing any great works!
I've only done about 15 pages but the change from squarespace has been a game changer! -
First impressions. It's really cool, clean and impressive. Nice Job! I am with Richard. It looks big-- I feel a little crowded like I have to scroll to understand the format or it doesn't fit my setup (which is a large screen). BUT still it's a great site!
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Thanks guys,
Here's a couple more I did, very wordy but I think I did ok.
http://www.nqca.eu
http://www.employabilitysouth-belfast.orgGota say Richard that your site's are really nice, I've always admired your layouts when you've posted them and you obviously have an innate sense of design. This is where we differ as I have to go steal (by force if necessary
) mine, i Just need to go robbing a better class of designer in the future 
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For fonts that scale to viewport resolution using media queries try using REMs as your font-size: in CSS
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I tend to adjust font size per device, In fact I'm so OCD, that sometimes I'll change text content per device so it stacks properly! Weird!
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@paul russam said:
Gota say Richard that your site's are really nice, I've always admired your layouts when you've posted them and you obviously have an innate sense of design. This is where we differ as I have to go steal (by force if necessary
) mine, i Just need to go robbing a better class of designer in the future Thanks mate, but don't think we both are somewhat guilty of pinching ideas!!!
Mate, don't know if you've tried Webflow? I seriously dig it! One of the beauties - if you like something on a page in the showcase, you can open it in webflow to see how they structured the object or set it's transitions. Make pinching ideas a lot easier!
BTW, those to pages you linked, again for me load slowly!!
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Doubled up post
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