Official Luthiers Forum!

me and my room mate have been working on this site periodically for the past couple months, i finally got it all more or less finished up and thought i would share it with you folks. let me know what you think! all opinions, comments, and suggestions are welcome.


http://petersinstruments.com/

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~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

Very interesting site Shad. Lots going on to keep the interest....very creative.
Couple of things that jump out in my opinion. Too many fonts .... I think there are at least 5 different fonts on the homepage alone (not counting the two in the banner). Lacks continuity, like each time you sat down, you picked a new one. I like the randomization of the banner but I might also replace the "sketch" with an actual pic of each new guitar style.

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Dave
Milton, ON

Looks really good. Nice overall feel, color choice, pics... My only comment is on the three pane front page. The narrow left portion should probably either be on a separate page, or integrated into the main part of the front page. There just too much going on there. Seems too busy on that page. All in all, awesome.

Looks Great to me !!

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The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
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Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
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I like it very much. It shares the same rich visual aesthetic and unique flights of fancy that shape your instruments. I'd venture to guess that the design reveals a fine arts background, which is refreshing in the hyper crisp, super clean realm of contemporary graphic design. Whatever the influence, it shows great personality, which I find very appealing. Does it tell me everything I could ever want to know about your guitars? No. But I think that's a good thing. Your site does make me want to talk to you about your guitars and learn more about what it is you are doing. That is the response you want in your visitors.

Just my opinions, of course...

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George :-)

I like it! Nice artistic feel, and I like the brown and green color scheme. Thank you for not making one of those annoying "entry" pages, where you have to mindlessly click an image or watch a slideshow before getting to the good stuff And having your short bio in the left bar and pictures of several instruments around the page gives a good idea what you're about right off the bat.

Great videos too. The Outlaw sounds awesome. That's something I think far too many luthiers omit from their homepages... although I suppose with acoustics, recordings are far less representative of the true sound. But I still like to listen.

I like it, you can really get a feel of what your about. I love that antiqed tele style.

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Jason Moe
LaCrosse WI 54601

Shad you have done a great job,that main photo is excellent but if you will please allow me to make a few small humble suggestions (sign,ticket and drafting bground) pls dont take offence.
If you you use justified spacing in your blogs and typesets it will tidy up things with a contrast and allow a place for our eyes to rest.
Once again pls forgive me saying this but the font used for your business name at the header is almost impossible to read and imho is not doing you any favours. White is not a happening colour and would need to be delineated.

Steve

Thanks everyone for the comments and opinions i really appreciate them all and will take everything into consideration. Don't worry Steve, you are not going to offend me, i know that the website is not perfect and that is part of the reason i wanted to share was so that i could get suggestions for how to make it better.

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~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

I think the design work is very nice. I prefer a less busy design, but that is just personal opinion.

One criticism I have is that the banner pics load very slowly and I have a fast connection. Check your resolution on those pics, you don't need much for online photos. For that size pic the photos should have a resolution of approx. 300px x 1000px for high quality. Basically the size that they are displayed at.

No big deal, but in terms of code, tables are really old school. Also, all of your CSS should be in a separate file that is called up instead of on each page.

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Randy Muth
RS Muth Guitars Website
RS Muth Guitars Blog
Facebook Fan Page

As I look at it again, Steve makes some good points. The elements of design to consider are: proximity, alignment, repetition and contrast.

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Randy Muth
RS Muth Guitars Website
RS Muth Guitars Blog
Facebook Fan Page

One more point, use a sans-serif font for your text. Much more readable on a screen than a serif font, which is good for print.

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Randy Muth
RS Muth Guitars Website
RS Muth Guitars Blog
Facebook Fan Page

thanks for the advice randy, i will have a look at the banner photos and see what the resolution is. after some of the comments here i think i agree it may be a little busy as well, its easy to do to much. now im just trying to figure out how i want to declutter it. in regards to the css stuff, i appreciate the advice but that stuff is really over my head, essentially a friend of mine put together the templates for me and i just built off of what he had done (all in dream weaver)... so though i appreciate the advice i dont really know how to change any of that stuff.... or exactly what it is to begin with lol.

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~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

Shad, actually the pics might be fine. I realized afterward that everything was going slowly for me. I needed to reset my modem. Sorry about that.

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Randy Muth
RS Muth Guitars Website
RS Muth Guitars Blog
Facebook Fan Page

Very nice Shad. Great overall look and nice looking guitars. I agree with what others have said about the fonts. And a photo of one of your great looking guitars would look better on the banner.
Walter

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Walter Lay
"It's taken me so long, but now that I know
I can see. All that I do or say, is all I ever will be"
- Billy Joe Shaver

Shad, I started poking around your site and I found this statement a little disturbing at first. Initially I thought that it basically read "If I decided to make any changes to your guitar, I reserve the right to make the changes and charge you for it". That didn't make any sense to me, I then realized it was meant that if the buyer wants to make a change... etc etc.

I might be dumb... but if your clients are at least as dumb as me, they might get turned off at the wording of that phrase.

Lookin' good, otherwise!

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-Marcus
http://www.bailieguitars.com
Instagram | YouTube

thank you for pointing that out, i'll go reword that so its clear what i meant. thanks!

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/