Let me be the first....

[NickT'sGTP]

Well....I can handle criticism very well....so let er' rip.

www.IAWBody.com/forum

I'm trying to figure out something for the header. Let me know what you think so far.

Be aware I'm a n00b at vBulletin, and I've only had this forum running since september-ish....

~Nick

[Greg]

I like where you are going with it, but it's now tall enough to be very ledgable. It seems a bit squished.

[NickT'sGTP]

yeah...I had a HUGE one on there before...but I decided to make it smaller because the site was acting slow....lol....

[Greg]

That one may look good with less drop shadow.

[lmnobs]

I like it :as it is a clean right to the point descriptive puncture of what you have. Load time is at a minimal .

[bigH2O]

I don't think size is the issue. You've violated a cardinal rule of design with that text by using a black outline directly on red lettering. There is not enough contrast between black and red, so they bleed together making it difficult to read. If you want a black outline on red text, you need a thin separation of a high contrast color between them. I run into this all the time... customers wanting red text and black outline. I explain to them the difficulties visually, and they usually understand better. It's easier to show them than to tell them, so I just lay it out both ways and once they see it, they inevitably choose to stay away from black on red.

What font are you using for that image? If I have the font (and I probably do, I have over 100,000 fonts) I'll throw some ideas at you that will make it much easier to read.

[Ohiosweetheart]

I have to agree with bigH20... the general rule of design is NO NO to black outline on red text, unless there is a contrasting color between them.

That said..... I'm a good one for breaking rules :p I do this all the time in designs. I work around it by adding an inner bevel to the red text, thus giving it a "raised" effect, then add the VERY thin black outline. It works very well, almost every time.

But please... lose that drop shadow! IMO, drop shadow should be used only to make some thing stand out, or compliment it. In this case, neither result is achieved. The drop shadow is overshadowing the text, rather than complimenting it or making it stand out.

[NickT'sGTP]

thanks for the comments guys, :) this is the kind of feedback I need. ;). The font is sofachrome. You don't necessarily have to make it sofachrome...

What colors would work well with the forum?

[bigH2O]

Ray Larabie makes some nice fonts, doesn't he. Yep, sofachrome italic is the font, and it will work just fine in red with the approriate kerning and color offset using the traditional vbull skin.

I'll play with it a bit in the morning and shoot you some ideas. It's a bit late tonight... too much eggnog if you get my drift.

[NickT'sGTP]

mmm....eggnog......

[Ohiosweetheart]

LOVE eggnog!

Hey Nick, come submit your site to my Topsites directory!

[bigH2O]

I played around with that logo a bit this morning. Unfortunately I couldn't come up with a good solution using the sofachrome font. I tweaked and adjusted the kerning on it until everything looked great, except for the IA part. No matter how I tweaked it, the word always read LAWBODY.COM. The crossbar on the A is just too low to make the word legible.

So, I scrapped the sofachrome font and started with a font called 3 Lori Slant DNA. I chopped and butchered it up into a chiselled effect and finally came up with something I like.

I kept the drop shadow, because I like it. The implementation of the drop shadow in your original image was all wrong which is probably why Peggy suggested that you drop it. The perspective was too deep, and the orientation angle was backwards, effectively negating the slant of the italicized font. I shortened the shadow considerably and changed the orientation angle so that it gives a feeling of slant (speed) to the text, even though it is a mostly vertical font.

Notice that I kept the black outline on the red lettering... but there is a thin white outline between the red and the black. This causes the letters to pop out of the outline rather than being soaked up by it.

Anyway, enough explanation. Here are two files, both low res (100dpi). One is a jpeg in case you want to fiddle with it some, and the other is a gif with a transparent background ready to be dropped on the web site if you want to use it. The 300dpi jpeg is about 400k, and the board won't accept files that large.

EDIT: I meant to add that if you want the larger file, drop me a PM with an email address and I'll send it to you.

[Ohiosweetheart]

Awesome work bigH20!

You're right about why I suggested that he dump the drop shadow. The way you've used it here is just what I said... it should be used to enhance the text and/or make it stand out.

I like!

[bigH2O]

Awesome work bigH20! I like!

LOL. Thanks Peggy. I guess Nick didn't like it much though.

[NickT'sGTP]

I liked it. But it's a bit big though. I was going to use something for the left of the header, and then use the right side for a rotating banner for vendors.

[Ohiosweetheart]

It can be reduced in size can't it biggie? Then you'd still have room for the banners

[bigH2O]

Yes, it can be reduced which will help the load speed, but at 23k it should load fairly quickly as it is. You can either reduce it, or specify the percentage of screen width you want it to occupy along with justification in the HTML code for the header.

[Ohiosweetheart]

he needs it small enough so that he can sit it to the left of his forum and fit standard size banner ads to the right of it

[bigH2O]

:rolleyes: I'll be happy to resize the thing to any resolution you want it in. The original is a vector, so I can make it big enough to be seen from the moon if you want, or tiny enough that the whole thing wouldn't fill a single pixel (wouldn't be very defined when converted to gif though).

Just tell me what size you want it. I don't know what resolution Nick's thinking when he says "the left side". The left side is a lot bigger at 1600x1280 than it is at 1024x768 than it is at 640x480. I don't know what resolution Peggy's talking about when she say "small enough".

OR... you could just set up your stylesheet for the main template to tell that image to occupy the left 30***37;, or 50%, or 10% or whatever of the header space, and be done with it. The only reason you'd need to reduce the physical size is to reduce load time, even then you'd only want to reduce it if it's physical size is larger than what you need to fill up half the screen width on the highest resolution your visitors will ever use.



he needs it small enough so that he can sit it to the left of his forum and fit standard size banner ads to the right of it

[! # Abhi # !]

I could not view the forum!! It said without login--I can't do anything. Sorry --can't review.