A Tennessee Summer

Great Review. Great site. It's all about the color in this site.

Although the site is very nice looking, it is far from usable, atleast for the laymen. The links are not clearly links, elements, espcially titles, are poorly placed, and extraneous elements may confuse users.

None of the links are underlined or in button format. This is not a big problem for the top links due to their location, but is pretty confusing for the bottom ones that are the same color as normal text, have no underlining, and don't appear within a menu or button.

The page titles are below the random reason to visit, which is a 200+ pixels high. There is no current status on the top menu. The user basically gets no indication if they are on the right page until they are 300 pixels down.

There are a bunch of other usability issues stemming from the location and context of the reasons to visit and the different time of day options.

I suggest you read, 'Don't Make Me Think' and apply the principles to your work. The visual design is very good, just needs

Very nice review. Great site!

This site has wow factor no matter how many errors you find. Lets face it, perfection is a tough goal to accomplish but the designers of this site had that task in mind.

My only gripe is that the links at the bottom are not clear function wise but this was already mentioned and to be honest is not a big issue at all.

As for needing to read books on usabilty it's never a bad thing to do but I don't feel the supposed issues as strongly as the previous commenter.

Very nice colors, overall quite cute site!

I honestly believe that beauty, interms of websites, can be attributed to the organization of information. It's easy enough to flood the site with both content and graphics, but to balance the two as well as keeping an optimal amount of content available to the user is the real secret of the masters. To be able to fill a page with content and not have the end user feeling "overwhelmed" is a talent unto itself.

By the way, congradulations on the Stylegala "Moderator-ship", no one contributes more than you, and you are definitely deserving. So to one of my favorite designers, I hope you have a wonderful day.

Thank you Steven, it's nice to know that my help is appreciated.

I feel the design is beautiful but over-designed. I would like to see a usability study done on this site. I think people would find the search on the bottom strange, the tabs on the top too small, the color contrast(s) bothersome, and the calendar app hard to use.

I love the unusual design and the 'wide' navigation instead of the usual small sidebars or top menus. It works only with a few links of course.

Another thing to enjoy are the rbight colours and the cheerful mood that supports the sites content.

The typo is a bit plain and emotionless. Maybe more funk / summer would have been better?

Overall: well done!

Nice, consistent style, but there are some problems:

Block of text on orange background? Oh, my eyes!

In events almost every link leads to their blog, which doesn't have matching style. That's a no-no.

Stunning, stunning website. There are a few little things id have done different but beggars cant be choosers. This site does exactly what it says on the tin... makes me want to visit Tennessee in summer.

They should have made the headings and other elements pink/orange/maroon for the body background. The white text on those colors kills my eyes and are hard to read. While a great looking site, I believe too much emphasis was placed on the visual design rather than the user experience.

I agree that the headers changing with the time of day is great. Really nice technique that you don't see often enough.

I also like the way the blocks are layered on top of each other as you go down, kind of cascading down, very nice aesthetic appeal even if it wasn't intentional.

However the site uses way too much images-for-text and the form at the bottom has no label. I agree that it's weak on accessibility/usability. Also, the navigation at the top is really small.

Just my 0.02 cents :) Great site.

Yeah, not wanting to grumble but this is one of those sites where it isn't immediately obvious what this site is actually about. I would guess that it's a tourism site for Tennessee, but I'm still not certain. Apart from some other usability things, I like it.

@Duncan

I want to get some of that gear you are smoking man.

Not obvious about what the site is about? You must be smoking or injecting something.

The site doesn't have an obvious explanation of who the site is for or who made it. There's almost too many calls to action. It's hard to know what to do. There's no profile of the site's owners nor of the state in general. How about some history. Why should I visit Tennessee. The site itself has become a destination – download this, check this out. Not, book here, how to get to Tenn., suggested itinaries, testimonials etc.

Who is this site actually for?! Potential visitors to the state? I would argue it doesn't resolve them very well. Sure, it's a funky site but not particularly goal-focussed. It just seems to be a front-end to their events database, which is hosted on another site. The site doesn't make much sense out of the context of it's parent site and it's weird how it jumps between the two sites. Very confusing.

Look, I've been using the net for a decade, I've been developing sites professionally for seven years, I'm not some stoned freak. Well, most of the t

Everyone is saying, "i would have done ____ differently." But the truth is, none of you could have created something this beautiful to begin with, so allow them the credit they deserve.

Thank you Brad and everyone for the thoughtful comments, compliments and suggestions you have posted. Indeed, there are always trade-offs in the design process and many of the insights are spot on. The great thing about this client is we get to revisit and improve on the seasonal sites every quarter so it is always a grand learning and trial and error process. Again, thanks for taking the time to comment.

My apologies if my criticism seemed overly harsh. The site is a really good looking site - and I guess that is the main concern of Stylegala. I looked at the site as a whole.

@Brad - That's just a cop out. The site was put forward for criticism. The design ability of the person critting the site is irrelevant - the value of the crit is what's relevant.

Great site! It's the art. Design, colors, usability are perfect. It's really beautiful!