The Shuttle Bus

I also dig this site pretty much. Especially that soft animation. Yummi! :D

I wish the animation was slower, however.

I think they did a good job of keeping the color palette rich and bold while still not overpowering your senses.

Excellent!

I love anything that is not following right angles and boring CSS boxes / rounded corners.

The clarity is great. The quiet typo balances the freaky boxes.

Nice looking site, kinda childish :D , makes me also think what russ said : "Not bad but not sure if it's stylegala worthy." ?

Anyway gg.

I would add cursor: pointer to the next button - otherwise, pretty good job.

Nice site, but not so good looking for me.

There are some usability problems, even if the code is valid in most of the pages.

not that funny ... I have seen funnier things. It misses something ... detail and thought.

One should aim for only the best ... you want to do stuff that

is better than anyone did ever before; that's the mentality

I really like the design, very nice and a bit different.

Header animation started making me feel a little unwell after a while (some kind of motion sickness!) though. Anyone else?

Well thanks for all your comments, and thanks for the review Simon. I'm glad that the general concessus is that it is liked - It is important to me that my designs attempt to break the mold, I feel that the 'CSS Clique' are trying not only to standardise coding which is a good thing but also trying their best to identikit the design of sites with all the icons, soft buttons, drop shadows etc. etc. and I just want to be different, even if it does leave me open to criticism!

Thanks!

It's great to see sites that break the mold and take a more illustrative approach. Illustration is too often underused, and here it gives this site a lot of character.

I don't think it's "childish", perhaps a bit "whimsical" but the style is consistent and works really well.

layout is not very clear - what's the most important part of the site?

Animation makes me dizzy ;)

Routes page looks just like a few paragraphs of text + loosely related images (and I find DHTML image viewer annoying).

How come the site looks funny in Firefox? Check the contact form. Come'on a site on stylegala should be placed for perfection!!

@dommega

The site looks fine in firefox for me. Same as it does in IE. Anyone else see issues in Firefox?

Gallery sites at Stylegala have never been perfect. If they were then everyone would rate a perfect 10. There is no such thing as perfection in design. People strive for it but it is rarely if ever achieved. Point out the errors by all means and let us know what the designer should have done better. This way other people will learn from it too.

The majority of the public are voting this site Stylegala worthy as well. Look at it's score it is by no means the lowest rated site on Stylegala. Rightly so too.

I like that. Uses the screen nicely, nice colours and graphics and it's easy to read and use the site. Good work.

Like the flash too.

I love the way that the really critical scenesters never leave their own site for us to view :)

I agree with the reviewer on this one.

The form on the right is really nicely done. The colors were weird at first but now I like them. The animated header gets annoying after a while though.

As an aside, what's up with all these sites being developed with XHTML Transitional? The transitional doctype is not supposed to be used on new sites! It's only for old sites done in HTML that are in the process of being converted to XHTML Strict. That's why it's "Transition"al. This should really have a Strict doctype, whether HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0, as should any other site in production.

And to ross ("Not bad but not sure if it's stylegala worthy"): I happen to like the fact that Stylegala is posting more sites lately, I think they raised the bar a little too high for a while, and I think there are still more sites out there that deserve to be in the gallery. Obviously by the votes this one deserves it.

sorry, but i really do not like this site, it does nothing for me. The illustrations make it look like a childrens trip out, and the arrows make it look like its part of the recylced community. I wish I could say it was even fun.

The site could have been great, but it seems rushed and lacks imagination (it takes more than 1 animated banner to make a good site) Very little thought for the content which looks as though it has had no consideration.

Sorry James : (

I must say I have to agree with Heidi on this one. The main concept seems to be the moving houses which to me does not sell the product, it looks like a primary school site.

Oh my god You've killed Kenny : )

James, u a fan of south park?

I think you have to remembr that we are a profit driven agency with a high number of clients and in some cases for financial reasons we are restricted to the amount of time we are able to spend on sites and also are heavily reliant on input from the client, including them supplying content.

Our objective is to produce as good a piece of work as is possible for the given budget. As for the comments on "child like", we feel it is important to do something 'different', take a look at the imagery they supplied - how would you guys make a commuter bus service to an smokey industrial park look sophisticated? And would that really speak to the end-user? We're not selling diamonds or expensive cars, every site has to be considered for the client and their end users!

That header just about gave me a seizure. Anyone else?

visual issue in header 800x600 in FF, might want to look into this, it is probably not big fix

James, I appreciate what your saying, I too work for a profit driven agency (most of us need to make money) but I do not see a message on the Shuttle Bus website stating this site has been produced on a restricted budget?

I know what your saying, but at the end of the day as the viewer we have no idea of what the budget is, so can not take that into account when reviewing a site and why should we if you decide to submit it to style gala. If you did a site for free what would that look like? Its a balance between standards and creativity, you can not simply blame the client for poor imagery, a good designer can work with nothing

You mentioned that you struggled to make a commuter bus service look sophisticated, why would you want to do this?

Virgin have made trains look exciting and fun without making it look like a primary school;

take a look at the animation, the only good thing, but the illustration and style works http://www.virgintrains.co.uk/travellingwithus

Pete, that is a style for a train company who have seats up to £200 - this is a £1 a trip or something to a bleak industrial estate for factory workers. I am not saying that it was produced for minimal budget but that these things have to be taken into account.

It is part of my job to submit to galleries as it is a good way of increasing the Google pagerank. You say a good designer can work with nothing, that is true - I feel like I have made a good website which fits the brief and the client is elated with the end result. I think you will also find a lot of positive comments for this site above and it has also been nominated in CSS Mania's end of year awards.

I think if you also re-read my post you will see that I didn't mention that I struggled to make a commuter bus service look sophisticated and that I do not feel that is the target audience. Please get your facts straight.

I have to agree with James on this one, you do have to take budget into account; we would all love to do great sites on big budgets - sorry Pete.

However, I do feel that the site has absolutely no personality; the whole site has been built around moving houses? The content is presented poorly IMO.

I can not believe that this site has been nominated for a CSS award, what is happening, Where have the stylish, innovative and inspiring sites gone, sites that left you feeling motivated to do good work, whatever the budget?.

nice try!

would not inspire me to go back let alone use the site as a public information service.

I would rather walk :)

appreciate the concept, would be better with alternative graphics.

It's a sad sad world when people get berated for trying something different. Geez at least it's not other faceless blog layout!! Get our more people!

It's not my fave design ever but big up Stylegala for showcasing at last some genuinely interesting and forward thinking web standards sites! And props to James too for an interesting piece of work.

Sorry, but I would not refer to this site as "forward thinking"

This website shakes at slower pc's ( not surfable )

This site does not display correctly in Safari using OSX 10.3.9 - phone in top right corner breaks up and ends up looking like a pizza, anyone else have the same problem on a Mac?