Analysis of 272 Designs

Roya Mozzzami – CIMPLICITY
The design is as its title infers, Cimplicity. I like the horizontal menu bar where the menu image is covered on hover with a .png to verify that the link is being selected. I do feel that the design could have been enhanced by allowing the divs to be centered on the screen. This would have circumvented the use of absolute positioning and increased the difficulty in lining up menu items. All-in-all, Roya generated a very good design, readable, easy to navigate and pleasing colors.
Daryl Jacob - CIMERING IN STYLE
This is my design, so let me start by admitting my bias. The first challenging aspect of this design for me was floating the width controlled page content in the center of the screen while maintaining a liquid body and background image. I chose to allow the content to scroll over the background in order to maintain a consistent and stationary background. Positioning the nav local and nav global links was the most difficult aspect of this design, given the floating content div. It took a lot of experimenting with margins, width control and positioning. Also, getting gradients and radiuses to work in the popular browsers took a bit of work. The design was chosen to “get attention” and “evoke a reaction”. To that end, I believe that I have succeeded. The bright colors may be a bit much for some and the theme may not appeal to everyone, and I understand that.
Amr Fahim – YELLOW PAD
This is a fun clean design that is liquid, in that the design fully fills even the largest of monitors. The only fixed width div contains the vertical menu items.. The design scrolls at a very narrow width, perhaps to accommodate an handheld device. My preference is to use a larger min-width that would circumvent the wrapping of the horizontal menu items on some pages. Also, I noticed that the font “freehand” does not seem to be working.
Karelee Dickersone – ‘TIS THE SEASON…
This design is a clever twist on the Christmas theme. Positioning of the Showman is right on target. The rest of the design is straight forward with clean lines and good readability. I would like to have seen this design centered in the screen.
Richard Freeman – CIMPLY AMAZING
I like the colors and the graphics in this design. I especially like the Cimply Amazing graphic, which has a dimensional appearance. Also the header, where a grading is incorporated into a jpg image, is avoiding the challenges of using grading via css and the difficulties with various browsers. Again, just wish this design were centered in the screen.
Staci Campi – CIMPLY ELEGANT
This is a full width design that works well in desktop monitors, but it does crunch up a bit when the viewing area is decreased. Radiuses are nicely done and margins are effectively used to separate background colors.
Kelly McBean – THE CIMPSONS
This is really a design favorite with a very clever theme. The black on white text and use of the ‘Simpson’s font’ resulted in one of the easiest to read and navigate websites. This full screen liquid design has an effective min-width, preventing distortion of the design as the screen size decreases.
Luigi Scollo – AQUATIC SYMPHONY
Another clever liquid design with terrific use of transparency.
Jennifer Wise – CIMPLE GREEN
A very clean and easily readable design. The most attractive thing about this design is the absence of fancy effects, which detract from the usability of a design. This is a liquid design, with effective control of the width in smaller screens. The hover background image is a nice touch on the vertical links. Clean and Professional!
Alia Vera Aynex – CIM
Terrific graphics and simplicity of design are the stand-outs in this website. It is an effective full screen liquid design with fixed background and scrolling page content.
Dennis Martin – CHARGERS
This is a well laid out design with easily accessible and clear links. I like the hover effect on the vertical links and the appearance of the footer within the page area.
John Shiply – RED ON WOOD
This is an effective liquid design with a min-width that kicks in before things get out of control. I am not sure what the theme is for this design, but the background and the other colors are appealing. The type, especially for the nav local and nav global links, is a bit small and these links tend to get lost in the header block.

Daryl Jacob 4/8/2013