Typophile

Crit personal web-site

totocaster

Finally, I've launched my personal web-site (http://totocaster.com). I wanted it to be super light, simple, focused on front page and to have great typography and readability without any non-web-standard font. I've used only three fonts from which only 2 are used mainly, those are Georgia and Helvetica (Neue for ultralights), for super small texts and photo descriptions I've used Apple standard Lucida Grande which looks perfect form me when used in a very small size.

All major browsers are supported except IE, best viewed in Safari. Sorry Windows users of Internet Explorer, text shadows are not supported by your browsers yet, and typography looks ugly if you have turned off screen smoothing.

Share your thoughts, what could be done better?

Thanks in advance.

You should specify Lucida Sans and Lucida Sans Unicode as fallbacks for Lucida Grande. The former bundle with Office 04 on Mac, and also (80% coverage) XFree on Linux based systems. I couldn't see any Helvetica Neue UltraLight, and I'm on a Mac.

I like the somewhat retro look.
What bugs me is the all caps header, which don’t merge well with the right navigation. I suspect it's also because of the uneven use of whitespace.
(also you may want to update your favicon)

I have the habit to click the main logotype in order to return to the front page, but in your site I have to click that little "back" image next to the logotype. That's uncomfortable, IMHO.

If you're using white as the color of your photo captions, you might want to reconsider it if you have a lot of high-key B/W photos. Check the photo caption in your about page. :D

On the "New Site Design: Typography and Style" page, the Typography section heading has a typo in it ;-D
"Typoghraphy"
________________________________________________
Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster's stopped working.

I find it interesting that you chose to use letterspacing:-.1em on the headers. I can see how it is interesting to merge characters, but not all the characters merge and, given the differences in font rendering between browsers, more or less of them are actually touching.

As mk2 says, having a clickable header is extremely common, so requiring users to click the "back" button is a little counter intuitive. It should also have a rollover, similar to the nav system to indicate that it is clickable. Ahh, I see. You've set it up so that the back button goes back to the previous page rather than to the home page. A persistent navigation might help resolve this.

I really like the way you've overlaid your images with the text and underline. It feels rather nice, though I worry if you don't have the text shadow (like on the about page).

Also, on the "Software" page, the "ft" is begging for a "ft" ligature (I think it is ſt), though that might break your letter spacing intent.

In any case, that's the main stuff I saw. Overall I like the feel of the site & especially the hit of color in the navigation area, though I wish you'd use those colors more throughout the site.

Nice stuff so far!

Thanks for responses, I really appreciate it.

About Logo and "Back" link on inner pages, to be hones I know that clicking on Logo/Caption is most "intuitive" way getting on front page, but in this case I love the way Back button works. This site has such a little quantity of navigation items that getting used to only(!) one must be like 123. But, on the other case I'm really thinking to make caption link to home page and add "Home" (or even Back) suffix on hover.

I really love they way text overlays are displayed over images now, but only in Safari. I admit, those texts are sometimes un-readable on B/W photos when viewed from Firefox because FF can not display "1px blurred" shadows properly, they simply are not crisp enough. I'll try to remove shadow and replace it with semi-transparent gray (or black) background.

Thanks for comments again.

Oh yeah, I've got to learn how to draw icons, and "favicon" is prove for that. :D

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