Elan snowboards

I don't think the grunge effect was overdone one bit. The target audience will appreciate it and that's what matters. It actually makes me want to buy a snowboard... and I don't know how to snowboard or ski, and I didn't even get past the front page yet.

The standard of gallery sites on Stylegala has gone through the floor, quite literally. Ive been coming to this site since the beginning but the standard has dropped of late. This site is over-wrought and extremely busy and in my opinion not of 'gallery' standard.

We've seen the 'wicked-worn' look site done before & alot better executed. The last three featured sites in my opinion are heralding the deathknell of stylegala as one of the respected design sites. I smell marketing deals not quality design.

Daz your comments are unwarranted and unwelcome in this comment section as it pretains to this site. if you wish to voice your opinion about what should and should not be included in stylegala, please direct such comments to the forums in the appropriate thread.

keep the comments here relevent to the site at hand.

Daz - you seem to be such an expert in web design and standards with your last two site crits, we'd all love to see your work as well.

This site is not bad. I do feel with the subject matter that it could have been stronger. I also do agree that the grunge effect is a little overdone. I love the wicked worn and grunge look but here it seems very jagged and hard. I would've loved to have seen this with the same use of dirty brushes with a touch more softness around the edges. To me that seems to visually take away from the site as a whole. And maybe the use of a third color on the homepage?

I really dig the subtle use of flash on the homepage. Simple and to the point.

I think this site is well made however I agree with dazs comments in that its kind of old news and that there may be better examples of this kind of look elsewhere. Nice but nothing special I give it a 6!

Their previous site (although very similar) was much better.

Subjectively, I'm well into the grunge messed up look - it gives a site real energy and interest, imo. Not appropriate for every site but, in this case, spot-on. This site works really well and shows an awareness of target audience, a high level of consideration to design ideas and also to web standards. I have seen this same site featured on other showcase sites before (wsa), but it seems to be always changing and updating so worthy of another feature. Wether a style has been used before is irrelevant imo, what I want to see is design, of any style, done well and executed properly, and if new ideas come from 'under the bonnet' or visually on screen' - either, or in some cases, both is fine and dandy with me. This design invokes a reaction for the right reasons ...

When looking at this website I am sort of split. From a user standpoint, the colors are very dark and the color pallet runs together and all though the navigation is at the top my eyes got a little over whelmed. They could have used more color to divide the content up. Make a section have a blue scheme, give another something else. Use color to your advantage.

The site is well put together and I'm sure has some degree of standards, but was a little under designed for my taste. Now I'm not saying it was bad...in fact I like what they did, but a little more attention to detail could have gone a long way.

Generally, I like this site. I think the grunge look fits well with the subject matter, as I believe everyone here thinks.. The only thing that bothered me was the white boxes that were behind the links.. There seems to be nice images behind them but they are obscured by the boxes. I would've probably turned down th opacity. (maybe ripped, grunge edges there too).. other than that.. I like it.. sorry, I'm long winded.

Personally, I like the grungy/wicked worn look as much as the next person, but I also think a good design is in the details. There's some things I think would really improve this website.

1. I like padding and margins, it makes text so much more enjoyable to read. If I look at the front page, there's not a lot of padding there - and there's some overlap in the footer text and the white bit, that certainly could use some padding.

2. I like contrast about as much as padding. Some of the colors - however good bright green and grey go together - weren't chosen too well. For example the rollover color for "Ask the pro", or the somewhat dark grey text on the dark grey background.

The design is very nice though, I really like the header a lot.

I confess, I looked and I looked, and I just didn't "get it". I can appreciate what the designer tried to accomplish with the stark colour choice and the grunge borders. However, I think the plot was lost somewhere along the route and it all just ended up looking a little over busy and a little scruffy.

It might well be that I am so far removed from the target audience that I'm just not supposed to see the magic that appears visible only to hardcore snowboarders, but rest assured, the magic wasn't there for me in the least.

I understand that black seems to be a favourite choice at the moment, but the moment I see a black webpage I think piracy site or hacking site, and instantly associate a bad feeling with it. I would have thought that a blue and white mix would have been more appropriate here (and far more readable to the eye).

The grunge effect, along with the colour choice left no really defined areas for my eyes to focus upon. Very hard to read and use.

This new version of the site uses nice colors, and it has been done a good coding work, but the layout is really too chaotic.

I have to agree with Daz (2nd comment), this site is not of Stylegala quality standards.

wow maz, this is more of a social commentary than a direct response to you, but what a world we live in when the color black automatically harbors malfeelings and white & blue harbor the opposite.

@Tom and everyone else for that matter:

Please do not make comments relating to Stylegala standards in gallery reviews. This is extremely disrespectful to your fellow designers.

Please show due professionalism and respect to your fellow designers at all times. If that's just not possible for you then you are not welcome here.

Just to remind you all.

Please feel free to comment on the site being reviewed. Please provide constructive comments which are either positive or negative. Please do not use disrespectful language.

If you really can't control yourself and you absolutely must comment on sites being Stylegala worthy or not, please do this in the forum. You are very welcome to comment on this subject there.

You are also more than welcome to submit sites to the gallery that you feel are worthy of a review.

First impression, I like. Personally I prefer a darker feel to a site, a welcome change to the massive white space or bright enough to blind websites I've seen.

As for the grunge effect, thumbs up. Not being a snow boarder, I can't say whether or not it would appeal asthetically to their ideal audience, but it does them well to have a site that makes a non enthusiest want to read more.

One minus, in my mind, a glaring one. Site loses some layout consistancy in Firefox. But then again, works emaculately in IE7. Which in the end many would say, is all that matters.

Overall, good stuff.

ps. well said simon.

Nice looking gungestylesite. Light on dark are always refreshing when it's this good.

I think the site has a nice feel to it for what they are and who their audience is. For the most part I like how they constructed their navigation's sub menus. I rather hate sites that have sub-menus that fly open as your mouse crosses the screen so this was a nice change. Though I do think the sub menus need something more to them to help them stand out be noticed. Since this isn't a very common approach some visitors may need help noticing how the navigation is setup.

One thing that bothered me on the site (and many others on the web) is that the stylesheet is set for screen, which is fine, except that there is no print stylesheet, and when you look at print preview it'll show the site with no style at all. This looks absolutely horrible, especially if you have background images turned on when printing. Since they do sell things on the site some people may want to print, but with out a print stylesheet, or at least make their stylesheet for all, it makes it unbearable.

Overa

Nice look, but the layout gets broken in FF. That's not acceptable in my opinion. Would be great if that were fixed!