Hi all, I'm running a contest to come up with a great design for 2 pages of my new property/real estate website. The contest will be split into two parts - this first part is to do the graphic design in the form of a PSD/PNG, then depending on the complexity of slicing the design and building a web page there may be a second contest to do this. The contest will run until I find a design I think is up to the standard I'm expecting, although I'm anticipating making a decision within 5 - 7 days so it shouldn't run any longer than this. Apologies in advance for the long description - it's an important project for me and I want to make sure everything is covered! PRICE: I'm leaving the price totally open-ended to enable a variety of designers to take part. I'd like you to include a price you expect me to pay along with your design although I've set the minimum at $100 to ensure no-one thinks I'm looking for ridiculously cheap designs. Please don't price your own designs based on what other people have listed - I'll pay whatever a design is worth in terms of quality, time and effort so just be realistic with the amount of time the design takes/will take by the time it's finished. I find it a shame when I see these type of contests where lots of designers put in a lot of effort only not to be chosen and their design to be wasted - to help counter this please don't spend lots of time on one design - post an initial draft and I'll provide feedback after which you can make changes if you decide to. SITE DETAILS: The site title is mypropertypage; the main site URL is the site title plus .co.uk, there is very little content here - in the final site there will be much more text so just pad with lorum ipsum or whatever you like. The second page I'd like designed is http://tinyurl.com/l76ceb. This is a dynamically built website and is still under development so you'll have to bear with any bugs you find (very occasionally the dynamic site may be unavailable). Another static version of the site can be seen if you put an extra / at the end of the second URL (see http://tinyurl.com/nfxfg2), although they're both very similar. THE DESIGN: The two pages should share the vast majority of their design - font, text size, colours etc. should be consistent. I'm looking for a clean, modern look, clear navigation, and no overbearing graphics or colour schemes - headers, menus etc shouldn't distract from the actual page content. Shared elements between the two pages will be a header design, background colours, page colours etc. The header should be property-neutral - the header shouldn't look like it's a specific property, rather a general image of something to do with property rental and/or sales, a cityscape image, a countryside image, anything like that. Don't make headers or navigation elements too big - just big enough to be usuable, I don't want these things to take up too much page real estate. I'm looking to have an 800px wide site, but if your design can easily adapt to 1000px or so then all the better. DESIGN 1: FRONT PAGE This is a front page for the website just detailing what the site is about, how it works, how to get in touch etc. There will be pages for T&Cs, FAQ's, Pricing, Contact Us, About us, although these aren't so important and can go in a footer if preferred. NO need to design these extra pages - just make the design suitable to be reused for other pages. DESIGN 2: CONTENT PAGE The content page is data driven, consisting of a horizontal and a vertical menu, and page content depending on the vertical menu option selected. I'd like a nice clean design for both the menus, with clear indication that an option has been selected/hovered. Each content page fits a standard layout - there will be a page heading, optionally some smaller italics underneath, just a couple of lines or so, then the main body of text. This text can have one image (optional), which can be either left or right floated, or central with no text around it. At the bottom will be a list of images in 3 columns, clicking one brings up a lightbox with a larger version. Fonts used for menus and text must be web-safe - so stick to verdana, arial etc., although graphics like the header can obviously be any font. I and the site are UK based so any images used must suit a UK audience; if you need any guidance, image approval or recommendations etc then please let me know. GENERAL: Full payment by PayPal immediately after the selected design is delivered to me. All images used must detail where they came from (iStockPhoto, Shutterstock etc), and I'm expecting to recieve any fonts used so I can make changes in the future if necessary. Any questions just ask.
Do you have a color scheme in mind? Similar sites that you like the look of? A current logo? Thanks Lisa
Unfortunately the site(s) I listed in the description is all I have - no logo, colour schemes etc in mind at all. What I'll be doing is thinking if it was my property being advertised would I think the design was professional, clean, easy to navigate etc, and would visitors to my site find the design appealing and easy to use. If you think along these lines then you won't go too far wrong, and don't forget I'm very happy to review initial drafts to make sure you're going along the right lines. The one thing I would say is that I don't particularly want a big bold logo - just some simple, clean nicely designed text with the site name, plus some attractive relevant images.
Hi Bizzard, I'm afraid this isn't the kind of thing I'm after - looks too much like a template (especially with the latest news boxes on the right - there's no need for anything like this on my site), and it doesn't have the left menu which is an important part of the design - it doesn't look to be based on the site I put in my description at all.
here is my proposal for the Home Page. I hope everything is correct. I made it content rich but still put graphics in there so the user doesn't get lost in words. I put alot of white space to make it easier for the user to navigate the site. The Price for the design which include the homepage and property page will be $125 If selected. I appreciate all feedback weather positive or negative and all changes can be made during or after the contest. Samir_Designs.
Samir_designs - to be honest I wasn't too keen on this design when I first saw it but it's growing on me the more I look at it. I like: the how it works section looks great, the way the house image is overlapping with the footer looks good, the read more, headings, text etc all look good too. I don't like: unfortunatey I'm not keen on the colour scheme, I'd prefer a white/blue/light green/orange/silver etc design, brown doesn't really do it for me; the house part at the top under the header is unecessary and not part of the design; the header itself doesn't look great to me and doesn't stand out too well, I'd prefer a cleaner menu - the modern shiny web 2.0 style look. So it's not a complete no, but I'm only 50:50 on the design at the moment.
In addition, a few more points for designers to note: - The most important page design is the second page, http://tinyurl.com/l76ceb, so I'd prefer designs to be based around this with the same text, horizontal/vertical menu layout and page images. - When I said an 800px wide site I meant a visibly 800px, with borders and a different colour body much like the design http://tinyurl.com/l76ceb. Some shading on the border I think would look great. - Menus should have a hover option, please show this in the design. - Please remember this is a UK focused site, so if you have to have a property image please make it UK style - you can search 'UK property' on istockphoto for some examples. But again, there shouldn't be any actual property images in the header, I'd prefer more generic images, maybe even something like this on istockphoto: http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-ph...country-panorama-vibrant-summer-landscape.php. I wasn't sure what kind of designs were going to be posted and wanted people to be creative, but in case anyone needs some inspiration or guidance I've found the following websites which I like the look and feel of: http://www.ipropertysell.co.uk/main.aspx (this is easily my favourite) http://www.homepages.com/ http://www.forsalebyowner.com/ http://www.eppraisal.com/ http://www.1sthomeexchange.com/ http://www.hotproperty.co.uk/ http://www.i-cy.com/ Apologies to the first posters for not doing this sooner.
Sorry guys, I haven't been too impressed with the quality of the designs so far and as I'm really keen to get this finished I've advertised it on another contest website. The prize is pretty good in my opinion for this kind of design so please feel free to enter designs there - hopefully this means no-one has wasted their time. You can enter the contest here: http://99designs.com/contests/28329. Thanks, and sorry if this disappoints anyone.
okay thanks for giving dp a try (giving two days) hopefully you get more entries in two days on 99design. I am withdrawing from this and may enter the other contest if I feel I am up to it.