improving your design skills?
SlyShy: I'll give this a shot.I'm expecting you don't want to spend tons of time on graphics and the likes, but you don't need to in order to drastically improve your sites as they are now.Your typography definitely needs to be improved. A lot of people say they can't tell when they need to fix their typography, so here's an easy test: paste a chapter of a book you are reading into your template, and see if you can stand to read it there, instead of in the book. The shorter the amount of time you can stand, the worse your typography is.As for colors, first pick a primary color. This'll usually be some pleasing shade of blue, red, or maybe green. Draw some blobs and lines of different size and thickness, and see how the color holds up. Then pick a complimentary background color. For example, when I use red as a primary color, I don't set it against a white background. The red will appear too jarring. Instead, I use a pale cream or very faint yellow. Your background doesn't have to be white, but it should be very light so that your text still shows up well. The point of having an off-white background, though, is that it changes the eye's perception of your primary color, and makes it look like it 'fits'. Test out your primary color again on your background color, and tweak the two.I think, actually, your color choice is already good on your personal site, but it is being marred badly by two things.The first is the navigation. I know that the two leveled effect is on purpose, but what it looks like to the user is that you had one very long navigation bar that wrapped around. The structure of this navigation is poorly conveyed here. The second navigation strip is supposed to be "under" David, so to speak, but you don't convey that at all in your design. Here's an extremely quick and dirty example of what might be better: http://mkbunday.googlepages.com/2010-02-05-091156_1024x600_s... Note you still wouldn't want "Padova Chronicles" taking up two lines.Also, please, please remove the ads from the top of the page. The whole "above the fold" thing is overrated... however, above the fold is where the user develops their impression of your site. When I see those ads right in my face, before I've even gotten to read the first paragraph of text my immediate association is with a cheap Yahoo Sites page.You might want to ask yourself how much that ad revenue is really worth. My guess is that it's not exactly a significant portion of your income, and you would be better off removing the ads and having a more favorable professional appearance.Minus the ads, the site looks a lot more favorable already. http://mkbunday.googlepages.com/no_ads.png Look at how front loaded the content is! The user can get right to the point, and read about you, rather than some really not that relevant ads!