Fresh Coat of Paint
If you’ve been here before, then you know that we just made a pretty drastic change in color scheme. I felt the last colors were a little too . . . harsh . . ., so we toned it down a bit in order to focus more on the information, rather than the container.
Another change is in the header graphics. I thought it made better sense to actually feature Daryl and Jim (and even Lon in the upper-right). The theme is that those are all simply screen shots from the various YouTube videos we have posted. All of it is essentially raw, unedited footage from the Freedom Shredquarters; personally, I think that it better helps to reflect what this company is all about.
I hope that everyone likes the design, and doesn’t have any problems viewing it. I’ve also made an attempt to make the site faster to load, so things should be better all around. Please let us know what you think in the comments 
Cheers!
March 25th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Revert! Seriously.
The previous color scheme was elegant, professional and striking; the new look is just boring. i understand what you’re saying about having more-representative pics at the top, but you should do it more like the previous design. stills pulled from low quality videos look unprofessional. please don’t take my criticism personally. thanks for reading.
eli
March 25th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Thanks Eli. I truly appreciate honest criticism; nothing personal taken.
I doubt we’ll revert to what we had before. Perhaps I’ll try some other colors, but I grew to really hate the ‘old’ colors. They were brash, and distracted from the information; they were hard on the eyes, _especially_ when viewed on “regular” monitors. Eli: you and I are used to looking at beautiful, high-res Mac LCD monitors. But colors change on those old shitty CRT things that upwards of 80% of people still access the web with. In my personal experience testing the site across many different systems, the old color palette offered too many nasty-looking variations to be considered either elegant or professional.
Personally, I would rather have a “boring” design that highlights the products and information, than dazzling graphics that are “heavy”. The site is now _half_ the weight it was (51KB). For the 10% of people that hit this site are still on dial-up, this makes everything load twice as fast. For an ecommerce site, this is not something to be ignored as the rate a site loads directly impacts sales. Even on broadband connections, unnecessarily heavy sites don’t do as well as ones that are quick on their toes
As for the header pics, Daryl didn’t have a very good first impression of them either, and those will probably change at some point. Personally, I _like_ the low-quality YouTube look. We’re not slick design professionals around here; we just shred, and want to share. That was the point; at least for me.
Thanks again for taking the time to comment. To me, a “finished website” is an oxymoron, so things will continue to evolve around here
Cheers!
March 25th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
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