2 practice layouts - feedback?

[redtom]

Right....

Comments on first two

Well I can see you can actual layout the design in a good easy to use way whats a great thing, as well as that you have a great eye for colour, but I would say the great let down on your designs is the small things, like the bold text every where is a big no for me, I would use the font Verdana at 10 pt this should improve them but this is only dummy text so it's not really a big thing, the next problem is the lack of custom effects, most people over use on effects but your different, you don't seem to use them must but when you do they seem to be set around the default setting for photoshop, I think you should try and be more brave with the way your using effects, the only thing left to comment on for the problems is the lines/borders, you should try and clean them up a bit.

So to some that up;

Clean up borders
Change text
Experiment more with effects

Comments on 3rd design

Well this is looking very good for the style of layout even with little effects, the logo/title is great in my opinion but you need to clean the borders on the owl images and I'm not to sure about the Gray border around the whole thing, try replacing the square with a rounded rectangle and then using the same border but change the radius to find whats right.

I hope that will help you and your layouts are looking really good so far.

[Puma]

pretty good templates well done =)

[Oni]

I did a quick mock up of what I meant but I had to do it in paint as I dont have the psd so it looks rubbish

[ScottDiamond]

How do you make gradients in Paint?

[Oni]

How do you make gradients in Paint?

Manually line by line then stretch it across and rotate it. I used to make all my layouts in paint, but meh.

[ScottDiamond]

Manually line by line then stretch it across and rotate it. I used to make all my layouts in paint, but meh.

That would stress me so much lol.

[Oni]

That would stress me so much lol.

Takes about 3 mins max. I used to spend hours doing rubbish layouts in paint.

[:Jamie]

Can see your progressing your skills in doing layouts. First one, the buttons dont really go with it, On the second one the white line at the botom doesnt fit in well.

[Mentor]

Thankas again for all the new feedback, plus i may reattempt some of the previous ones useing the advice given.

Although im still unsure as what to do with the first one, everyone keeps saying they hate the buttons but im not really sure what else could fit in with the layout?

Redtom: What specificly do you mean by effects?


Also layout four. I attempted to do a clean layout of one of my friends companys (Logo and orchard cottage graphics were done by him)

[redtom]

Redtom: What specificly do you mean by effects?

Layer Style effects (places with shadows and stuff) & Filter effects (the tab at the top named "Filter"), although filter effects arnt really used much with layers but when they are used in the right places and in the right way it's really good.