Brett Neal needed a new web page design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 41 designs submitted by 13 freelance designers.
MCE Dirtworks
Dirtworks is a locally owned paving and excavation company serving Cape Cod, USA. Owned and operated by Mike Escher, Dirtworks offers paving services that include everything from driveways to parking lot construction and road building. Dirtworks also offers a full line of site work including septic system installation and repair, drainage installation, land clearing and grading, and cellar holes. We are also fully licensed and insured for demolition.
Overall - none of the below sites pinpoint what we want - but each of them has one or two elements that we like. Hopefully the description above combined with what we give you below will inspire you to create a great site.
http://thompsonengineering.com/ - I'm not that crazy about this site, but it has a serious look too it and it's simple. We do want the full width banner, but I wouldnt want our site to look too much like this one. Ours will also have a black background for the logo to rest on at least at the top...
http://arpaonline.ca/ - sort of like the textures around the banner. They were also a little bit original with the way the banner is not just a solid rectangle. Otherwise... I'm not that crazy about this site either.
http://www.biberltd.com/ - The section under the banner is divided in a similar fashion to what I'm looking for ... company info, services, portfolio / testimonials -- overall the text on the site seems to small
http://www.mikeebee.com/ - Again - His sections are divided nice and simple and clean - Like the dark background although we would like to use subtle textures in our design
http://www.lovicks.com.au/ - Like the top dark area alot. I like the use of texture. We defintely wnat a call to action button somewhere but we would want it to stand out more.
http://www.seeclearjax.com/ - Like the top where the phone number and email sit. We would like something like that that really brings out that contact info. The services across the bottom of the banner are pretty cool although that may be something we code into the banner itself. So that when they click on the word the banner image changes. If you do decide to do something with the services you can find them in the intro to this information or on the site.
This will be a home page. The things that would need to be on their homepage are as follows: they need a slider type banner at the top that goes all the way across. They will have pictures of their work inside of here. They need some sort of call to action button that says "Free Quote", and a place where their phone number and email can show prominently. They would like an area for a brief company intro, list of services provided, testimonial's and possibly an image from their work portfolio or at least an area or button that emphasizes it -- If this could all fit.
TEXTURES, COLORS: The type of work they do involves asphalt and dirt. Black and yellow with touches of red would work well as a color scheme like in their logo. Textures could be dirt, asphalt, yellow lines like on a road... etc -- but used very subtly!. Their logo sits on a black background so plan on making the background -- at least where the logo is - black.
Remember this is a business site. It can be fairly conservative. Even though there will be black in the design we don't want the business to have to much of a "dark" or "edgy" feel. The images in the banner will also brighten things up.
Navigation would be:
Home -- About Us -- Services -- Portfolio -- Testimonials -- Contact
OVERAL FEELING: We want the site to have a strong, well established, professional feel. We want to have subtle textures and a nice clean look. Nothing wacky or cute.
Site width - We like 960px width on the site.
We will need the layered PSD and a jpg of the finished design