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Chris Williams Design

Posted on May 4th, 2006 by Shane

As part of the Spring 2006 CSS Reboot, UMS Friend and CSS fiend Chris Williams has launched his new site, and it’s fantastic. Now, he knows and you know that I’d prefer that font to be much larger, but I like everything else about this site. The color scheme is great, he uses a unique, creative layout that’s also a Liquid Layout, and — most importantly — he does an excellent job of conveying the wide range of information on his site.

Tags: Dark Background, Liquid Layout, Tabbed Menu, UK, Website Design Company

Rated 6 from 28 votes

More Opinions on Chris Williams Design

It could just be my connection (it’s been acting up lately), but the site seemed to take longer than necessary to load. Still, it’s very nicely designed.

– Chris Huff
It’s less than 72K total and I didn’t notice any delay from here, so it might indeed just be your connection.

– Shane
One of the very few designs , that i would say is perfect :D
good job/luck Chris dude,
except that arm chair thingy doesnt make any sense at all

– Sasan
Hi Guys, thanks for the comments & feedback - and a big thanks to Shane for listing me (the support is very much appreciated).

I knew straight away that Shane would think the font-size was too small! I’ve contemplated notching it up a size or two just for him, but I’m too big a fan of smaller font-sizes - as I’ve said in some of my previous reviews. Maybe it’s because I spend the majority of my time sat less than 6 inches away from my screen? :o) As long as it’s something that’s been taken into consideration and it’s possible to re-size without breaking the design I don’t usually have a problem…

The website is still very rough around the edges, and I have big plans to improve it much further over the coming weeks, so hopefully it will continue to get better and better.

Chris Huff: Not sure about the connection speeds? Granted, the site is quite image-laden which can make it very heavy (I think we’re talking somewhere in the region of 168kb altogether - 141kb of that images…) - so the site could possibly be to blame for that. It is easily the heaviest page I’ve ever created.

Sasan - Thankyou very much for your kind words! I really am “chuffed to bits” that it’s been this well received. I suppose the chair could be seen as quite random?! I’ve been in a number of art galleries over the last few years, of which some of them had big comfy chairs to admire the artwork from. I guess this isn’t the norm then!?! :o)

Thanks again, and if anyone has any further questions or input I’ll make sure to check back and see if I can answer!

Chris

– Chris Williams
Yeah, I should have mentioned that. A couple of CTRL-+ in Firefox, and the font was big and beautiful from 24 inches away, too — without damaging the design at all. The site still looked great.

– Shane
Great layout and color choices overall.

The only thing confusing to my eye is some distinction between the three columns. Small font size is one thing, but if the left column is the most important, I wouldn’t mind seeing it pop out more with a 13px or 14px font to indicate some hierarchy. If the hierarchy wanted to read left to right, you could even darken each column progressively toward the right to give the info some depth. Just an idea.

– Darren Hoyt
Lovely! The design is beautiful and clean and does a good job of displaying so much content. I particularly liked the menu buttons. Neat code as well.

I agree about the font-size, at 27 years old I’ve burnt my eyes at computer screens long enough to have to wear glasses and anything smaller than the font on this site (unmatched style) is difficult to read, and it’s only going to get worse. On the up side Chris has used nice line height for readability, but a slightly larger font-size at least on the main text would have made the world of difference for me on this site.

– Harmony
ahhh , Those chairs… now this makes some more sense to me , lol
again nice job :) ill be looking to copy off your website , just kidding lol

– Sasan
Hi again, thanks for the continued comments. As before, all feedback is very much appreciated.

It seems as though the font-size is the main issue people have with the design, so I may have to reconsider - Damn you Shane!!! ;o)

Darren Hoyt - I completely see where you are coming from with the hierarchy comment. In fact, if I decide to increase the font-size, it’s the left column that will be made slightly larger first (this is something that I actually had in the stylesheet prior to launching, but then removed at the last minute). The darker columns idea is also something that I may consider if a play in Photoshop is successful - thanks!

Harmony - Sorry if my site is difficult to read for you. IF i was to remain with the small font-size, would buttons on the site allowing you to increase/decrease font-size be of benefit to you rather than relying on other methods of changing text-size? (This is somthing that I hope to be implementing very shortly)

Thanks again everyone.

– Chris Williams

Chris Williams Design

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