The layout is very interesting and unique. I’m not sure I agree with all the colors you’ve used, but I definitely like the concept. It is, however, a bit on the large side. I have a 1280 x 800 resolution and I still have to scroll down for the content. (Just imagine what it would be like for people who have smaller resolutions!) And when I do scroll down, I’m suddenly faced with CAPSLOCK! OH-MY-GOSH! It looks like your introduction is screaming at me. And… what is with the right-align of the text? Overall, I have mixed feelings.

Information

Site: Kyohaku Designs
Type: Graphics/Resource
Owner: Ruolin
Reviewed By: Vicky
Date Received: 1/11/08
Date Completed: month/date/year
Preview

Presentation

Lets start with just the presentation of the layout itself. I’ve mentioned before, it’s huge. Generally speaking, you don’t want anything that forces the visitor to have to scroll down to read the content (because we’re just that lazy.) You have a lot of free space to work with, actually. You’ve spent a large amount of your time on the clouds and the skies. And while it’s a beautiful scene, it’s a little overdone and can be downsized, and perhaps cropped as well. Your content and navigation can also be moved further up to save some space.

I would suggest having the name of your site displayed in some sort of large, bold font at the top of your page. Especially when you have that much free space at the top with your graphic. That way, visitors know immediately what your site is called and it’s main function (graphics). Also, it is good form for the navigation of the website to stand out more than any links outside of the site (because as much as you love your affiliates, you still want people to visit your site, right?) So, with that in mind, it is not a good idea to have your affiliates highlighted with a bright box with a light background (especially when the rest of your layout is black.) It takes the visitor’s eyes away from your actual navigation.

Moving a little bit down now, the Caps-lock… it’s a little distracting and feels like you’re trying to scream at the visitor. (Not to mention, it’s not that attractive.) Your introduction message is a bit scary as well (the random “heh heh heh”? What does that mean and why does it need to be there?) My advice? Tone it down a little and take the caps-lock away. Oh, and it would probably look better if you justified the text, not aligned it to the right. The same thing can be said about the comments on your entries. Either all of your visitors who comment are really hyper and scream a lot, or you’ve set caps-lock on the comments as well. Either way, caps-lock is quite annoying, it’s overwhelming to read, and it just doesn’t give off a very happy vibe.

Lower caps in your content isn’t good either. I’d leave out the changing caps and just go with normal text. Making everything on caps makes it look like you’re screaming at your visitors, and putting everything in lower-cap makes it seem like you don’t know how to type with proper grammar and capitalization. (Not to mention, the face is xD or XD… it just doesn’t work when it’s xd)

Now to the colors. You’ve chosen to use some interesting colors in your layout. The red-blue-gray-black motif you’re going for actually looks quite nice together. However, using the same red in both bolded text and links is a bad idea; it’s not good when your visitors have to guess which are words and which are just bolded texts.

Your coding looks pretty clean. It’s just incredibly messy and over-the-top. There’s a lot of stuff that you really don’t need. Now that you’re pretty settled in your coding, try this tutorial on creating a tableless layout. You’ll find that your coding will become a lot more organized and it’ll be less likely that you ‘ll make a mistake.

Content

Terms

• Title of the page should be “Terms” of Use.
• Cut out the caps lock and make the text normal. And either justify the text or align it to the left; right-aligned is not nice to look at.
• I don’t think you need “the line”. Just listing what people should not do is enough. (Also, what does “comment Ruolin all the time” mean?)
• You talk about yourself in third person and first person at the same time.
• Specify. Explain what ‘hotlinking’ is. Explain what ’stealing your style’ means. Be clear, concise, to the point. This and this are examples of really well-written TOUs.

FAQ

• “anways” = “anyways”
• “Q: Can I just change this design and say it’s mine?
  A: Are you nuts? You’re gonna cross into the bad side of the line. x_x”
  A simple “yes” or “no” would suffice for this question.
• If you think some of the questions you’ve put up are stupid, why put them up?
• Linking to x-tenshi and yahoo when talking about them is a good idea. There’s no point to just giving names.
• “grammer” = “grammar”; “everypage” = “every page”
• “By commenting Ruolin on every update!!! XD Ruolin just love to read all of your comments!!!!” = “By commenting on every update! I love reading all of your comments!”
• Link to the contact page or an email when you say: “If your question is not here, please contact me.” If I don’t know how and where to contact you, how am I supposed to ask questions?

Credits

• This is a weird change in format. You need to be consistent in the way you present your information.
• Using lists is a good idea to organize everything. Bullet points look pretty and organized. It’s simple, just do <ul></ul> and in between, <li><a href="link">link name</a> - explanation [if necessary]</li> for each new link/credit.
• You don’t need to list the reasons for your thanks in italics. It looks weird for everything to be in red text. So instead of saying “Kalliel for being my muse” in my thanks, “Kalliel for being my muse” is fine and doesn’t look as weird (not to mention, it wouldn’t be one huge mess of red text.
• An explanation as to what types of images can be found in each of the links you’ve listed for image galleries would be nice. For example, Aethereality caries anime/manga artwork while faceless-stock carries stock images.

Linkage

• “Link Out” = “Links Out”
• “I hope you are emailing about something good! Because I don’t like receving junk, mean, and spam mails. That’s why I stoped using forms like freedback. So now as you can guess, you have to email me by your email to my email. XD” = “Please do not use this email to spam or flame me.” is really all you need to say. Also, please link your email. Instead of saying, “Feel free to email me at shui.wind@gmail.com“, for example, linking to the email makes it easier for the visitor: “Feel free to email me at shui.wind@gmail.com“. For a prevention of spam, you can try to add “REMOVETHIS” in your email such that it looks like: <a href="mailto:shui.windREMOVETHIS@gmail.com">shui.wind@gmail.com</a>

About

• “werid” = “weird”
• In the section about your site, a paragraph separation is needed between “and then I found Aoumi.” and “I got this name(Hope) from” Also, on that note, the second paragraph should probably start out with, “This site was originally named Hope Graphics” and then go on to explain where you got “hope” from (because nobody really knows what you’re talking about if you just start out with “I got this name from…”
• Perhaps explain what “Kyohaku” means?
• When you mention “Janet” in your very last paragraph, link to who she is. After all, she’s the host of your domain is she not? Then I’d say she deserves as much of a plug as the previous two hosts (both links, by the way, are broken.)

Designs

• Pages are nice to have. Instead of putting all nine layouts on the same page, space it out such that there’s 3-4 layouts per page.
• Why do the IDs for your layouts go out of order?
• For the most part, your designs don’t really wow me. Many of your layouts have really tiny font (font size 10 is usually way too small…) and ones like Robolove have an incredibly large and elaborate banner and then… nothing else.
• Blown Away could probably be more useful if the iframes were taken out; more content space for people, and less scrolling in general.
• On Fighting To Live (which is one of my favorites) there’s a weird change from dark red to slightly lighter red on the background which makes the text really hard to read around that area:
  

Icons

• Keep the page short. 9 icons per page would make the entire thing look more presentable.
• Other than that, I really like your icons.

Wallpapers

• Not much to say here, since there’s only one wallpaper. I like the fact that you provide more than just one or two sizes, and the one wallpaper that you do have is really nice.

Final Statement

I’m impressed with your icons and your wallpaper, but not too much by your designs. Everything looks like you heaped on a bunch of textures until the design just couldn’t hold any more down. Your coding could also be less messy if you switched to pure DIVs. And the affects that you put on your site (the caps lock and lower caps on everything) creates a very childish atmosphere.