I have spent 0 time working on design of my little app:<p>http://www.myplaylist.biz/<p>As it is just an experiment in the making and something to grind my teeth on while I await to find a decent job in this industry, thus I have concentrated on back-end features and processes,
now though I am seeking advice from others for ideas about how to improve the appearance 'look and feel' and fist impression..<p>Please be brutal and constructive.<p>Thanks in advance
A number of comments.<p>1. <i>The layout is prehistoric.</i> It harkens to the earliest days of internet design. Lose the global auto centering and create some blocks. Do this on a sketch pad and make as many variation as you can before deciding (see: <a href="http://v3.jasonsantamaria.com/archive//2004/05/24/grey_box_method.php" rel="nofollow">http://v3.jasonsantamaria.com/archive//2004/05/24/grey_box_m...</a>). Also, if you don't want to actually make borders, ensure the blocks are small enough wrt the text to be well-defined.<p>2. <i>The pallet chosen is diluted</i>. An easy way to chose pallets is to use a program such as kuler.adobe.com and make an <i>analogous</i> or <i>complementary</i> pallet. Don't make the colors too intense and test them as much as you'd test any other part.<p>3. <i>The typography runs together.</i> Typography is becoming huge in online design and it's really hard to get right. To learn a bit, I suggest Mark Boulton's "Five Simple Steps" especially steps 4 and 5 (<a href="http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/five_simple_steps_to_better_typography/" rel="nofollow">http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/five_simple_st...</a>).<p>4. <i>Keep asking people</i>. When you design something you <i>never</i> have a good idea of how effective it is. Asking people here and elsewhere is an absolute must, so this was definitely a good step.<p>Hope those help and inspire.
1. The .biz domain was created for spammers, and people who can't get a .com name. .biz/.info etc have 0 credibility...<p>2. Site looks usable enough.<p>3. Unfortunately there seem to be 3 million similar sites springing up recently that do exactly the same thing. What is unique with your site?
I agree with the comments people suggested earlier about coloring - a quick treatment with some schemes found at Kuler, ColorSchemer, ColourLovers - those will help.<p>"Enter any band whatsoever" doesn't really make sense...<p>A search for KoRn gave me a bunch of pictures of corn (lol) and the playlist consisted of some guy reading a book to me.<p>A search for Smashing Pumpkins returns a playlist that doesn't work.<p>A search for Madonna returns a playlist for Madonna and one for Stevie Wonder (wtf).<p>After a search, the page is just confusing - there is text everywhere and none of it labelled to tell you what it is. Playlist reference #: Why do I, as an end-user, care about this? I'll never remember Stevie Wonder is 216 - I will remember myplaylist.biz/stevie-wonder though. The free songs available are just thrown over to the side with no label saying what they are (actually, the label saying the # of free songs is way over in the middle - nowhere near this list), plus there is no cosmetic alterations to the text (I've seen some all lower, some all upper).<p>When viewing a playlist, I think some Ajaxified "framing" would be worthwhile. So the playlist can stay active and doing it's thing, but I could view the information, more playlists, the embed code, etc without leaving the page.<p>Oh yeah - remove the AdSense, you can throw that in there when you have your design finalized and you people that aren't ad-blind are looking at it. Right now, 90% of us never see Ads (through scripts or habit).<p>Why should I login/register?<p>Not a bad idea - definitely needs a new domain, some design work, and some time spent on usability and user experience.
Its not that bad. You played it down quite well.<p>I'm no expert but that red clashes with the lime green. I'd suggest using a pink. The blue writing is a bit hard to read, perhaps make it a lighter blue.<p>To be honest I wouldn't change it too much. It doesn't look like a shiny new 'web 2.0' website but I think that's a good thing. A lot websites look like they were made by the same person these days. Their perfection (and conformance) makes them invisible.<p>Congratulations on your new app. Btw I like your 'music videos'.
The playlist listing looks chaotic. Text is scattered all around, and its hard to make sense about the information and controls.<p>My quick tips:<p>1) Think of adding a new color for links, now you have bolding but it could be useful to have more contrast on links and less contrast on information<p>2) Group the information somehow. Make boxes and lines ,even invisible ones(grid design). Eg. Youtube, there is lots of information but everything is in a box and the boxes are lined.<p>3) Info-text on the frontpage looks kind of bad. Don't ever scale fonts horizontally or vertically.
I had seen this web-app covered on TechCrunch some months back. <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/16/myplaylist-combines-flickr-and-online-music/" rel="nofollow">http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/16/myplaylist-combines-fli...</a>
I had liked the site then mainly because of its functionality and simplicity. I personally think the cloud is too big and using too much real estate, use smaller fonts and red and white in the same row are strict no-no.
Overall, it looks okay. Nothing too offensive. Have a look at some colour scheme sites to get a palette of complementary colours. <a href="http://kuler.adobe.com" rel="nofollow">http://kuler.adobe.com</a> works very well, as does <a href="http://www.colourlovers.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.colourlovers.com</a>.
the bluish grey on the greyish black doesn't work, you need more contrast.<p>red on black is tacky... maybe use an image.<p>not design, but you might want to put some <noscript> tags somewhere telling me somethings (like info which seems to be help) don't work without it.<p>I'm having trouble spotting ads from content. things seem kinda all over the place... might want to change the groupings justifications and colors...<p>although I notice that I can play by click on the group of images, which barely make sense to me, it redirects... I don't know why it redirects it should just play, and the controls should be below it.<p>your nav at the top doesn't stand out, simple is use a gradient of a different color from your background.<p>just some suggestions, I'm not a graphic designer (I do pencils for art though).
I typed in the name of the greatest rock band of all time(<i>) and got a play list (it worked), but the pictures in the slide show were baffling: a bunch of cats and pictures of food.<p>(</i>) Meat Loaf (YMMV)
In addition to adding some more color ( I would use kuler and upload your logo then mess around with the colors) , I would removed the 'detele blank images' button you display on the playlist page.