[Qha]

Warning: these sites are in Finnish. They look best in modern browsers (CSS3).

The site for our hip hop cover band: Roope Salminen ja Koirat
Redesign of our improvisation theatre groups site: Improryhmä Kolina
for comparison the old one (2009) is here: Kolina.fi

Feedback welcome!

The band site is probably my quickest site ever, took only a full day to put up the design with logos and all, after I had brainstormed the concept. Suprisingly the short completion time also shows positively in the design imo, as I think I kept it simple in a good way. Maybe it’s the wide resolution or use of a lot of empty space but I’m happy with the layout and the javascript navigation (how the pages slide, even if going back in browser history). The rew and fastforward -buttons aren’t super useful, but imo they fit a band site in a retro way. I'm also happy with the vector pug, but the tag font could maybe use some work.

With Kolina-sites redesign my first priority was to take the site to this day with wider resolution and cleaner layout. We've also noticed that art deco -like style really works for us in posters so that's what I was after. One trick I used was that I don't use any white on the whole site, I tint all the white elements a bit to yellow to give a more organic look. The news items in the front page stream straight into the layout from facebook, and the upcoming gigs go to "past gigs" section automatically after midnight, so we don't have to keep the site up to date manually so much anymore!

[steveb]

One of your fonts is rendering as Comic Sans on the Kolina site. You might like to correct that before someone sees it.

The Salminen site looks good but does the text have to be bold? It's a bit laborious to read. Use bold only for emphasis and leave the rest of the text as regular.

[Qha]

Lol there definitely shouldn't be comic sans anywhere, only google fonts api. Where do you see that and what browser?

[steveb]

I'm using IE8 on XP (my workplace machine).

Uutiset & Seuraavat keikat are in Comic Sans. I'm guessing they should be the same font as the art deco links.

[Qha]

Okay. Apparently some google fonts don't render in IE8 and lower. And also the alternative font 'cursive' defaults as comic sans in IE. You see the 'bold' font probably wrong too. So I have to find an alternative to google fonts or provide a better alternative in font-family. No offence comic sans, you're not welcome on my sites :P

[Qha]

A bit more research: google font rendering problems in IE have been fixed by google so it should work. And when I rendered Kolina's site using netrenderer.com, no problem even with IE7, so your workplace must be restricting the use of google font api somehow.

[steveb]

Yes, it probably is. (Nordea on Mannerheimintie - it blocks most "good" stuff!)

[Michaeltinnin]

wow, amazing job! 1+