So, I have this old website that desperately needs a visual refresh. Been working on that at last, and wanted to make sure it’s not a big mistake. See for yourselves: before and after.
The problem is, I’m operating under some restrictions:
limited color palette (DawnBringer 16)
need to preserve some continuity with the old website (e.g. the banner)
it can’t be too much work (e.g. no redoing the banner)
Can’t promise to take feedback into account very well. Mostly, my question is: does it make sense to pursue this redesign, or scrap it and go back to the drawing board?
(Unfortunately I started with a simple page that doesn’t showcase many design bits.)
I think the layouts and the banner on both pages are pretty great but the muted cyan and green-yellow are a bit painful on the eyes if both are in such high quantity, they make everything seem a little sickly but maybe thats just me.
I def agree with @humanfinny, I’m not a fan of the before page’s color pallet… but I also have a bias towards dark theming in general
I think the best advice I can give is for you to look inwards and ask yourself why you feel your side needs a visual refresh? I’m not saying you’re wrong to feel that it needs one, just that I have to imagine your motivation to re-work your site’s aesthetics has to come from somewhere, and I can’t read your mind to tell you what that is.
Personally, I really like the color palate of your after page you posted, and I’m gonna advise you to roll with it.
Mainly, the original design lacks dark mode, and to be honest it was shoehorned into most sections, being initially designed for a wiki engine, not static pages. It’s also very 2017. Worse, it’s clever. I basically designed myself into a corner, and now it’s hard to change much while also keeping the original spirit.
i think the redesign is fine! the difference between the two seems to me like a lateral move rather than a big/noticeable improvement, and i have a mild subjective preference for the older one (basically entirely because i like when text is in a container box lol), but i don’t think the redesign needs to be scrapped! seems ok to me
i do agree with finny about #deeed6 having a somewhat sickly look to it as a text color, but it’s not super ugly or a major problem or anything, just a kind of odd quirk of the palette.
I have a theme on the other site that’s more of an incremental improvement (and still includes a box around the text). Do you think it would be better to go back and pick it up? That was my first idea in fact, but I’ve been staring at it too much lately. Wanted a change.
I actually prefer the Before over the After, even if the mint green could do with being a little less bright. (I’m, admittedly, not a fan of pure black backgrounds)
For the After, the body text is fine but the blue of the links is a type of saturated blue rests harshly on the black background. Personally, I would go for something slightly lighter, less saturated, and more ‘pastel’ like the text.
+1 for the “after” design. Despite the link styles being a bit too low-contrast, I still find it much easier to read overall. Given your restrictions, I think it’s a meaningful improvement.
For the links in dark mode, I don’t have an intermediary blue, but found a nice pastel green that’s lighter and contrasts nicely with the header+footer. What do you think?
Thank you very much, everyone! Since no-one else chimed in, I went ahead and pushed the new theme on a bunch of pages. Will finish the link section later; not sure about the rest of the site, because it’s mostly archived at this point. But that’s part of the experience.
