Website needs some help~
Encountering the landing page for Adam Haynes at, http://www.stickfort.com/, one would think the site would be pretty impressive seeing the detailed illustration. Upon clicking on the illustration to enter the site the user is shocked as the light tan background is drastically changed to a dark blue with gray and yellowish green accents. At first I thought I was linked to the wrong site as it was completely different from the landing page, but the more I studied it I found it was the actual site. In the end the actual site appears to be more of a blog in my opinion. The site is a personal website to display the work of Adam Haynes.
The text is very pixilated so I am guessing that the links and other text in the top box is images. I also don’t understand why the designer would choose a huge header and two equal columns below. The one column holds “Archives” and a few other links. Which was a poor use of space as the other column where the most of his content is located was long and narrow. This creates excessive scrolling for the user. It also creates a huge hold in the design in the shorter right column.
The portfolios are also set up differently and do not have consistency. The illustration portfolio has large thumbnails or small samples of work down the column that the user can click and view a large sample in a popup window. Under the archives though there are missing samples when some links are clicked. The user then questions why it is called “Archive”? The paintings section is completely different as it has small thumbnails in a small block next to the archives. Another small issue I see is that some of the pieces have the frame stroke and others do not. In the end the frame stroke should match the color scheme if it is on.
Then the user clicks on “Available Works” link and looses the other menu links. The page the user goes to also has a coming soon tag. A page with no content is not good, but leaving a user on a page without content without a way to get back is unacceptable.
Finally, the contact link goes directly to the email client on the computer. I am not a big fan of this type of command. If a user is not on their personal computer the email client is not what the user would want. Also there is not any other type of contact information.
Overall this site is very inconsistent and looks like it is still under construction. I also think the design of the site looks like a blog and really does not make this designer very appealing in a competitive market. The other issues of poor imagery, missing pages, and lack of structure and unity are all evidence in my opinion that this designer does not take his work very seriously.
Source:
Stickfort.com