What's new
By:
Photoshop Gurus Forum

Welcome to Photoshop Gurus forum. Register a free account today to become a member! It's completely free. Once signed in, you'll enjoy an ad-free experience and be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

In need of a little guidance and inspiration for a content box's background


Z

ZeHgS

Member
Messages
8
Likes
0
Hello! I am making myself a website and am in need of a little inspiration and guidance. I am basing my design on the attached file and I would like to make a similar background for the topmost content box. I would like to know if any of you guys know any tutorials teaching how to make a background with those highlighted "waves". I tried making curves with the pen tool, closing it into a box, making a selection, filling it with white, setting the opacity and fading it by erasing the borders or masking, but it wasn't a very good result.

I am also interested in any tutorials that teach how to make other professional looking backgrounds or any websites that are similarly structured and could serve as an inspiration. Just for reference, what I intend to put there is a similar dialog box where the person chooses what type of service they are interested in from a menu, such as "Translating, Proof-reading, Subtitling", etc. Any other tips are welcome.

Thank you very much!
 
I don't need any help with the wave thingies anymore. This is what I came up with. Any feedback is welcome. If a moderator would please move this the appropriate section, I would greatly appreciate it.
 

Attachments

  • preview.jpg
    preview.jpg
    456.8 KB · Views: 0
I like it, the only small issue I have is readability of black letters on dark blue. Otherwise it is nice and simple, it is fine in my opinion.
 
That was a great point, thank you! I changed that and some other things, let me know what you think, especially about the globe.
 

Attachments

  • preview.jpg
    preview.jpg
    679.8 KB · Views: 0
Yes, it is definitely much better.

Hmmmm, I like the idea, just I would not use the one with clouds, so from esthetic as psychologic point of view, your company offers experience without clouds for sure ;-)

There is one thing bothering me since I saw it for the first time. It is probably stupid question, especially when you work with language and I am not even native English speaking, so it will be probably just confirmation of my mistake, but I did think "qualification" should not be used in plural, was I wrong ?
 
Last edited:
peta62 said:
Yes, it is definitely much better.

Hmmmm, I like the idea, just I would not use the one with clouds, so from esthetic as psychologic point of view, your company offers experience without clouds for sure ;-)

There is one thing bothering me since I saw it for the first time. It is probably stupid question, especially when you work with language and I am not even native English speaking, so it will be probably just confirmation of my mistake, but I did think "qualification" should not be used in plural, was I wrong ?
Click to expand...

Thank you for your feedback! That was a good point, I will try too look for a cloudless one.

No, qualifications is also correct. Even though a person is referred to as "qualified", an absolute state not subject to plurals, that person may have many different types of qualifications. Again, thank you very much for your opinion, it has been very useful!
 
Hey ZeHgS,

Great start on your layout. It looks clean and professional. I noticed a few things that I think could help improve the look you are going for.

Based on the design that inspired you, I assumed you were going for a modern look. If that's the case, you may want to experiment with some "San Serif" fonts. They tend to give a modern feel where as the "Serif" fonts you used give a more classic impression. The globe was a great touch but I think a non-clouded version would help communicate your message better.

The middle part of the layout feels a little cramped. I would possibly shrink the 3 icons down a little and add a little more padding to the light blue box on the right. It's been said that modern layouts tend to be big open space. In my opinion, the headings in the 3 boxes at the bottom of the page could be tweaked some. The white boxes that contain the titles seem incomplete since they don't fully reach the other side of the surrounding box. Maybe stretch them out all the way and see if you like the look.

For search engine optimization purposes, you may want to include a footer at the bottom containing your contact / copyright information. Definitely, not a requirement but something to consider.

I know some folks prefer visuals, so I took the liberty of implementing a few of the ideas into your layout. Hope this is of some help.

Best regards,

Treydahn
translation-layout.jpg
 
I am sorry, but this globe seems schematic to me, not like a look on a real one, although I also support no clouds, the lower part in comparison with original has less contrast ( kinda washed out ) and the smaller icons are step back to worse readability.
Just my opinion.
 
No need for apologies. I appreciate differences in opinion :) One way to make the icons more readable would be to increase the text size while maintaining the padding around whole icon itself.
 
Thank you very much Treydahn! I had made another version before I saw your post, here it is: http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/2231/previewegx.jpg. The logo on the left is just a place maker and will definitely be changed. I tried making the left part a little more visible and I think I agree with peta62 that it decreases readability.

I agree with the cloudless version! I think I will use this same globe and just Photoshop out the clouds and see how it looks. Thank you for your suggestion about the fonts, I really liked it on the second dialog box. I will also play around with my dialog box, I think liked the curved "tail" better. I will change a few things and post what I come up with.
 
I would take the globe from http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/2813/previewhb.jpg and put it into http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/2231/previewegx.jpg

I prefer so the red selections in your offered activities, the red somehow adds life to the picture and the whole lower part seems better to me. Especially for web, where people have different browsers, different screen resolutions I think the text has to be as much readable as possible, since it may be a bit crippled in some environments, but t still has to be easy readable.

Just my opinion.
 
Hey ZeHgS,

I think the revised design looks great. It's highly readable and uses inviting colors.

I was impressed with the cloud removal job on the globe. But I think it may be cleaner to find a photo of the earth without clouds to begin with. The link below is a good spot that I use to find free images - http://www.sxc.hu/.
 
Thank you very much for your help guys! I think I will play around and make a few versions and I will come back! Thanks!
 
Back
Top