Looks amazing, Taz. You defiantly have a sensibility. Congrats!

Looks great, taz!

That is GREAT, taz! very original and easy on the eyes. Memorable!

That's REALLY cool, taz.

How odd. I just noticed the Storybox/Carole and Paula"link. It's a weird coinkydink because the other day I got curious about them, and almost composed a MeFi post about The Magic Garden. I still might...

Thanks so much, taz. It really does look wonderful.

It's gorgeous, but the multicolored links really don't work for me. I'm an information design nerd (Tufte and all that), and it's just confusing to not know what the different colors "mean" or whether I have clicked on it already. The serif font and block paragraph are a bit hard on my eyes as well.

I love the general design of the front page - very standout and clever.

What if clicked-on links just reverted to black or dark grey?

When you say "block paragraph" do you mean that there's no indent? 'Cause I usually dislike indents in most web layouts, unless there is an extra-long line width. For some reason they tend to bother me a lot, and I actually find it harder to read with indents. This could very well just be me, though.

I guess I mean more line breaks. I don't want an indent.

Breaking the text into more paragraphs, or just more spacing between paragraphs?

In fact... the problem may(?) disappear with even more linespacing. Maybe. I will try it. I tend to use quite a lot of linespacing, so I kind of hesitated using even more here, but it might do the trick. When I try that out, I'll email you to have a look-see.

Looks super sweet taz.

I'd suggest a semi-transparent background on the news & updates box to distinguish it from the bg image

Yeah - I thought about that... Then... never got back to it. :) I think it will help there a lot.

It looks great Taz! It's very playful and inviting. Wunderbar!

A couple of minor things that occurred to me, feel free to take or leave any of this, you have a great site here and I won't be sad if it stands as it is:

1. Agreement with dodgygeezer.

2. I don't get the distinction right away about why the handmade page also didn't get the redesign, so I find it abrupt to go there. (I realize now b/c it's because it's a slightly different entity, but then it gets included in the persistent navigation which I'm mentally grouping as all things Harvey -- and thus wishing it too had your treatment applied to it). Is there any way to fold this in at least into the same page dimensions? Or is the client unruly in this regard? :)

3. Additionally, on the navigation front, I usually find it irksome when a contact link is a mailto if it hasn't been set off in any way from the rest of the links. As it stands now, I'm expecting a contact page and I just launched a mail program I don't even use. Typically my rule of thumb is if it's a mailto, then it should display as an address, and /or not be included in the nav block. That said, I've broken that usability practice in places myself, but it is something I try to solve so people know it's a mailto and not a page.

4. If you're thinking of following Matildaben's advice, but you still want multiple colors, you could consider an off site / on site link color distinction, though I'd consider carrying that over to the site nav as well as the inline links so that people can make the connection quicker. What I didn't get on this front, was why the news and update links weren't multi-color as well but they were black like the persistent site nav. I would've thought that with the many color regime this would be reversed. Ultimately, I too would prefer a more overt logic to the link colors. I see that when I hover over the links in each area they have a consistent and logical grouping even as the regular link state violates it. But if playful is what you want, then you do have it here, and you should damn us tufte-heads to our color coherence doom! :)

Yes, I think changing "contact" to "e-mail" is the way to go there. Originally, I was thinking of having a whole contact page with more information... but as long as it's only e-mail, that should be clear.

The link colors were just meant to be playful, yes. What I wonder is how many people are really confused by that, because I haven't actually run into any sites that have many different colors of links in their regular body text that mean something different for each link color. I mean, is it more of a reflexive usability rule (like, you're using a color? *Why* are using a color?! What does it *mean*?). You know, why do we have a giant toy cow-toy creature and other toys on pages... those aren't specifically like "rabbit means music / cowboy means reviews" either - they're just there for fun, and for a certain kind of feeling, and something that connects to the band (because they are very playful, and they actually do collect vintage toys). So, for me, it's a visual fillip that I didn't think would confuse anyone.

And, it's a band site, not a business site... so I want to take liberties to some degree. Not to the degree of forcing the user to jump through hoops and decipher secret graphics links in order to navigate the site, or, say, using dark grey text on a black background to be really wicked moody (and utterly unreadable). But perhaps colors really is off-putting in the same way, and if so, I'd much rather go with a more typical style.

If any of that sounds defensive, or argumentative, I truly don't mean it to be. I would love to be able to talk in person, a lot, about it all, and then it would be clear that I mostly would really appreciate the chance to discuss a lot of things like this with people who are doing it, because I never have that.

Too-long-already, but the Terciopolo pages could easily be folded in... but I have the impression that it's basically a different thing, since it's not Harvey Girls stuff. We'll have to talk about that....

I [heart] taz. Truly.

I [heart] taz truly too; she's been so lovingly generous to us. It's been like having Michelangelo come over to put a few coats on the ceiling. Thanks to everyone who's looked it over and offered their thoughts.

(safteyfork, Terciopelo is a weird beast, a DIY label Hiram's old band Teriyakis self-recorded under before they got on Priapus, and that became a home for other bands/side projects he was involved with. We put out first two records under that name too. "Collective" seems a bit grandiose, but that's basically what it was. So it has its own lengthy history/identity apart from us, and we've no idea *what* to do with it. There's also some Priapus-released songs mixed in there, now that I think about it. Oy, what a mess. By the way if you want to know what Teriyakis sounded like, here's a couple of my favorites, Picaresque and Proud, and Tea Parties on the Ceiling.)

Oh and Miko, I've thought of doing a Magic Garden post in the past too but never got around to it. If you did that would be absolutely GREAT.

We miss you interrobang. I don't know why I'm still whispering.

I think it's swank.

I don't disagree with the points above, though -- the color changes are hard to "get". I'm not sure whether the way to handle that is to categorize them or make them go away or ... here's another ... have bands of colored text and black links, just to fuck with people's little lizard websurfer minds. ;-) Maybe only the nav links should be colored, at least they're in a nav column so it's clear?

So it's clear I like the general idea, it's just ... odd in encountering it as an interface per se.

I liked the from-above shot of the toy, almost like a parody of all those people-looking-up stock photos.

taz: feel free to e-mail, I'd be happy to discuss any aspect of site design with you anytime on any project. There's a lot from you that I could learn as well.

If Terciopelo really is a different beast, then I would consider how to offset that in the navigation so the user expects some difference upon arrival. At this point, it feels like you've painted all the house but one room. And, I think it takes too much background work to figure out why. This is just my opinion, but I would see if H & M were cool with some kind of update to that page. Basically, it can either go into the new look and feel or go the opposite direction, something that really sets it off as its own entity. I think an adjustment to the nav is a good first step.

I think the link colors is a preference thing given that I've seen band sites with disappearing links etc, sites that take playfulness and cool to the level of frustration. I think the multiple colors are way more in bounds than that. As matildaben had raised it, I thought I would also note the bit of cognitive dissonance I felt when trying to incorporate them into the meaning. I got them on the level of play, but personally wish there was more there than that. The other concern about them is how they map for colorblindness, but I don't think you need to take a band site to that level. It is the kind of thing I'm supposed to think about at work. They evoke the playfulness nicely and are usable, which really is more than some kidz today with their crazy hover tactics and such.

As mentioned before, it's a wonderful site, very delightful, and I hope that also came through in my previous comments (and this one too!). I was concerned that maybe I hadn't stressed that enough after I saw how many words I had devoted to my other discussion. I hope it sounds like I'm offering constructive criticism and not harping or anything because my aim is to say you have an excellent web site, but here are a few things I think you might want to consider. I think its hard to discuss these things online with the kind of subtlety and grace they deserve.

No, problems, dear safetyfork - I felt the same thing when explaining back - in text things look more strident/urgent than just discussing the same thing.

I've made quite a few changes based on the comments here: I made visited links black. I increased the line spacing, but didn't like the way that looked much, so then increased the width, and am pleased with that. I put the semi-transparent background on. I played around with the links a lot. I looked at them with all one link color, and felt let down. I looked at them with no color, and preferred that to one color, but didn't much like how much colder it felt... So, I'm sticking with my links-of-many-colors, unless people really do report being confused.

However, in sitting and looking at it, I was able to put my finger on the one thing that had been bothering me about the links (a competely different aspect - purely aesthetic): I didn't like the underline being the same color... So I have changed the underlines to black, and now I'm much happier with them.

Also, by the way - the underlines are there for people with color blindness, so that's why I'm not concerned about that. The links are very easy to identify no matter what.

So, to see all the changes, you'll need to clear your history, and in fact your cache, since the images were changed to accommodate the longer width.

(Leaving the Terciopelo question for the moment, 'til I talk with Melissa and Hiram.)

I think the black underlining ties it together just enough! And keeps it playful, too. Aces.

Thanks - it feel much better to me, and it's unlikely I would have worked that out without the conversation here... So I'll definitely be taking you up on your offer to chew over stuff like this.

yay!

Beautiful design. Refreshing, actually!

Everything is in the right place... my only suggestion would be having the photo gallery match the theme of the rest of the site. I see the Porta forum thread for customization is populated only by tumbleweed - but how hard can it be? Maybe very. At least you could put a couple of black bars on the sides?

Anyway, great job.