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Clean & Professional Thread Design Template

Submitted by CranK, , Thread ID: 75449

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CranK
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15-02-2018, 05:13 AM
This post was last modified: 19-02-2018, 12:36 PM by CranK
#1
Would like to share my custom made thread design template.
It includes some different layouts for the home section (adding maybe people on it)
and some other stuff just check it out and don't forget to like!


[Image: Fxf0Up.jpg]

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RE: Clean & Professional Thread Design Template

murdpower
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15-02-2018, 05:42 PM
#2
as a designer myself i like this aproach, i think is original content, good work.

RE: Clean & Professional Thread Design Template

CranK
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16-02-2018, 02:12 PM
#3
15-02-2018, 05:42 PM
murdpower Wrote:
as a designer myself i like this aproach, i think is original content, good work.

Np and thanks by the way, glad you like it, hope you can use it for a sales thread
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RE: Clean & Professional Thread Design Template

Lukecetion
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16-02-2018, 07:30 PM
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[spoiler='Design Feedback']There's one issue that plagues the entire design as whole, that is the gradient used or rather the format it is used within. There seems to either be a complete lack of or a bad use of Dither making the gradient look blocky rather than smooth in it's transition. It's true that this depend on the monitor used, though a good designer knows how to make something near universal. Another thing that is oddly alike the previous issue I noted is the text.

The format it is placed in (Sharp) looks nice if the elements are large and visible, though they turn awful the moment they are resized after the file has been made. The result is text that is blurry and "smudged" so to speak. This issue occurs whenever the image is resized and considering it's size in width (1080) then it will be resized on almost every single forum you can come across. Meaning it is almost universally bad to use on a forum, which works against it's main purpose.

What I have no quarrel in the use of is the icons selected, they are fine and have no obvious problems with them. One issue with the overall use of them though and not their individual use is what they are. The logo is a non-organic design where as the majority of other icons are organic and there are elements of both organic and non-organic design in the entire thread design. There isn't much of an issue if you use those two together, you just have to keep them somewhat separate.

That means the elements themselves can be say organic and the icons be non-organic, however (except in very rare cases) the elements shouldn't be both organic and non-organic at the same time unless it can be rationally explained away by logic. (Material design does this by mixing the two slightly with their standard navi bar.)

Though the biggest issue by far is the entire pricing area of the design. Let's talk boxes first. Why are they sharp? The there are no icons, no fonts and no image (other than the one logo) that implies that the boxes should be sharp. The background boxes aren't curved because they stretch across the entire design (which is what I said about explaining it away with logic) so there is no reason why the boxes in the pricing area should be sharp. They'd look far better with a bit of smoothing to them. I'd make an example but it would be annoying to do because of how you made the PSD, more on that later.

Now let us talk headers. Here is an odd thing, "Bronze" and "Sliver" pack headers aren't centered properly, neither in height nor width. However the "Gold" is centered properly. This makes me assume that you did the "Gold" first and checked it, then just assumed the rest would be centered just as fine, while in reality they aren't. (It is visible, and I could give you an exact pixel count if you want.) This is also the case of the actual price tags as well, which is even more bothersome because it affects all three of them, not just one or two.

Right under that is another issue, the color of the approved payment methods and their icons. It blends far too well with the background, making it more of an annoyance to read than anything. So that were my two penny's worth of design opinion, now let me share an opinion that is specifically more relevant to this kind of thread. We are gonna talk about the PSD.[/spoiler]


[spoiler='PSD Feedback']I found several problems with this share right off the bat. The first and most obvious one is that you didn't use standard fonts while completely neglecting to comment on that or share the font files. Now that isn't user-friendly. (It is extremely annoying for people looking to use this kind of thing, as they are probably not so well versed in design.) Another thing that isn't user-friendly is the organization of the PSD itself, by that I means the layers within it. Let us list the elements as they appear in the design:

- Header
- About
- Features
- Pricing
- Contact
- Footer

Now let us list them as they appear in the PSD:

- Footer
- Contact
- Pricing
- Features
- About
- Header

That is non-logical and annoying for people. What this does is forcing people to work with your flow, instead of their own. Making it more annoying than enjoyable to learn anything from this PSD. One last note before we dwell into the folders themselves. Why are (example) "Home" and "Features" both the same color? What do they have in common? Oh right, they don't have anything in common and they are likely the same color for the sake of laziness or "I wanted to make it look artistic".

Now let us talk about "left overs". By that I mean layers you intended to use at one point, but decided not to use anyways. Like the "Taskbar" for the header. It serves no purpose and it looks awful on the design which is likely why you decided to not include it in the finished product, then why is it in the finished PSD? The entire "Home" folder has the same organization problem as the folders themselves, they come in an very illogical pattern. The elements appear as;

- Taskbar
- Logo
- Undertitle
- Description
- Arrow

But the layers appear;

- Taskbar
- Arrow
- Logo
- Description
- Undertitle
- Title

This is a problem throughout the entire PSD. The final thing I'd like to note is about the Rulers and the positioning of elements. Most of (if not all of) the elements are off-center despite the fact that the Rulers are placed to show the center. So why make them if you aren't going to use them? If you used them during the creation but they are no longer accurate, remove them before sharing the PSD. People use these kind of things to learn, not to get dizzy and die of it. This goes back to what I meant when I said that this PSD is everything but user-friendly.[/spoiler]
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RE: Clean & Professional Thread Design Template

CranK
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16-02-2018, 11:43 PM
This post was last modified: 16-02-2018, 11:59 PM by CranK
#5
16-02-2018, 07:30 PM
Lukecetion Wrote:
[spoiler='Design Feedback']There's one issue that plagues the entire design as whole, that is the gradient used or rather the format it is used within. There seems to either be a complete lack of or a bad use of Dither making the gradient look blocky rather than smooth in it's transition. It's true that this depend on the monitor used, though a good designer knows how to make something near universal. Another thing that is oddly alike the previous issue I noted is the text.

The format it is placed in (Sharp) looks nice if the elements are large and visible, though they turn awful the moment they are resized after the file has been made. The result is text that is blurry and "smudged" so to speak. This issue occurs whenever the image is resized and considering it's size in width (1080) then it will be resized on almost every single forum you can come across. Meaning it is almost universally bad to use on a forum, which works against it's main purpose.

What I have no quarrel in the use of is the icons selected, they are fine and have no obvious problems with them. One issue with the overall use of them though and not their individual use is what they are. The logo is a non-organic design where as the majority of other icons are organic and there are elements of both organic and non-organic design in the entire thread design. There isn't much of an issue if you use those two together, you just have to keep them somewhat separate.

That means the elements themselves can be say organic and the icons be non-organic, however (except in very rare cases) the elements shouldn't be both organic and non-organic at the same time unless it can be rationally explained away by logic. (Material design does this by mixing the two slightly with their standard navi bar.)

Though the biggest issue by far is the entire pricing area of the design. Let's talk boxes first. Why are they sharp? The there are no icons, no fonts and no image (other than the one logo) that implies that the boxes should be sharp. The background boxes aren't curved because they stretch across the entire design (which is what I said about explaining it away with logic) so there is no reason why the boxes in the pricing area should be sharp. They'd look far better with a bit of smoothing to them. I'd make an example but it would be annoying to do because of how you made the PSD, more on that later.

Now let us talk headers. Here is an odd thing, "Bronze" and "Sliver" pack headers aren't centered properly, neither in height nor width. However the "Gold" is centered properly. This makes me assume that you did the "Gold" first and checked it, then just assumed the rest would be centered just as fine, while in reality they aren't. (It is visible, and I could give you an exact pixel count if you want.) This is also the case of the actual price tags as well, which is even more bothersome because it affects all three of them, not just one or two.

Right under that is another issue, the color of the approved payment methods and their icons. It blends far too well with the background, making it more of an annoyance to read than anything. So that were my two penny's worth of design opinion, now let me share an opinion that is specifically more relevant to this kind of thread. We are gonna talk about the PSD.[/spoiler]


[spoiler='PSD Feedback']I found several problems with this share right off the bat. The first and most obvious one is that you didn't use standard fonts while completely neglecting to comment on that or share the font files. Now that isn't user-friendly. (It is extremely annoying for people looking to use this kind of thing, as they are probably not so well versed in design.) Another thing that isn't user-friendly is the organization of the PSD itself, by that I means the layers within it. Let us list the elements as they appear in the design:

- Header
- About
- Features
- Pricing
- Contact
- Footer

Now let us list them as they appear in the PSD:

- Footer
- Contact
- Pricing
- Features
- About
- Header

That is non-logical and annoying for people. What this does is forcing people to work with your flow, instead of their own. Making it more annoying than enjoyable to learn anything from this PSD. One last note before we dwell into the folders themselves. Why are (example) "Home" and "Features" both the same color? What do they have in common? Oh right, they don't have anything in common and they are likely the same color for the sake of laziness or "I wanted to make it look artistic".

Now let us talk about "left overs". By that I mean layers you intended to use at one point, but decided not to use anyways. Like the "Taskbar" for the header. It serves no purpose and it looks awful on the design which is likely why you decided to not include it in the finished product, then why is it in the finished PSD? The entire "Home" folder has the same organization problem as the folders themselves, they come in an very illogical pattern. The elements appear as;

- Taskbar
- Logo
- Undertitle
- Description
- Arrow

But the layers appear;

- Taskbar
- Arrow
- Logo
- Description
- Undertitle
- Title

This is a problem throughout the entire PSD. The final thing I'd like to note is about the Rulers and the positioning of elements. Most of (if not all of) the elements are off-center despite the fact that the Rulers are placed to show the center. So why make them if you aren't going to use them? If you used them during the creation but they are no longer accurate, remove them before sharing the PSD. People use these kind of things to learn, not to get dizzy and die of it. This goes back to what I meant when I said that this PSD is everything but user-friendly.[/spoiler]

Damn I'm really glad you took so much time to write all this down to point my mistakes out, it has been very helpful and I'm definitely going to improve what you suggested in my next design.

I was considering to just remove the gradiant completely as you pointed out it's not really executed well, do you have any tips how to make it look smoother? Just by using dither?

Also you pointed out that I took sharp for the text, which didn't looked bad while I designed the thing but, what should I use instead of 'sharp' then?

Wasn't really looking on how I placed everything in the .psd file, definitely going to work on my flow to make it more userfriendly,also I completely forgot about the font, so yeah I'm going to include that in the next one as well.

As I'm doing graphics as hobby and didn't really go through every single detail, I was lacking to understand some major things, going on a graphic school very soon, hope I can learn everything important there and start to get on the next level.

Also next question do you mind if I send you in the near future another one and give me another review on it?

Also thanks again for the effort you put into your critique never got a so detailed review around my design.
Much Appreciaton!
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RE: Clean & Professional Thread Design Template

Slaykings
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17-02-2018, 02:46 AM
#6
This thread design is, for sure, one of the best I've ever seen.

Can you contact me through private message?

RE: Clean & Professional Thread Design Template

Lukecetion
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17-02-2018, 05:08 PM
#7
16-02-2018, 11:43 PM
CranK Wrote:
I was considering to just remove the gradiant completely as you pointed out it's not really executed well, do you have any tips how to make it look smoother? Just by using dither?

Dither works by automatically adding noise to your gradient, making it appear more smooth. Hence it should (almost) always be one for gradients. That being said, there are other reasons why a gradient looks awful. Which are where you upload it to, what formats you save it in and so on, things like that. If you wanna go and increase the amount of Dither manually, then you'll need to add noise to the gradient manually. You can also try to blur it out, but I haven't had much luck with getting a good result that way myself.

16-02-2018, 11:43 PM
CranK Wrote:
Also you pointed out that I took sharp for the text, which didn't looked bad while I designed the thing but, what should I use instead of 'sharp' then?

That depends entirely on what kind of element you are making. Because of that, the best way to make (100%) certain it looks good is to try out different things until you find what suits your idea of the design. Personally I find myself using Crisp and Smooth more than I use Sharp.

16-02-2018, 11:43 PM
CranK Wrote:
Also next question do you mind if I send you in the near future another one and give me another review on it?

If I mind it? No. If I will be able to reply instantly? Don't know. Though you are free to send me anything you want me too look at.


On a last note, one thing I noticed (which I overlooked earlier). The title and undertitle are both aligned to the left, rather than the center. Which again makes it non-user-friendly. The reason for that is that anyone who wishes to use this as it is with minimal effort put in, would be required to either use a title and undertitle of the exact same length as the one you gave, or manually edit the placement themselves. What you should've done was to align it to center and then made certain it was placed properly in the center of the design.

RE: Clean & Professional Thread Design Template

Prophesied
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17-02-2018, 07:51 PM
#8
Looks good man! Good job! How long did it take you to do it?

RE: Clean & Professional Thread Design Template

CranK
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17-02-2018, 09:46 PM
#9
17-02-2018, 05:08 PM
Lukecetion Wrote:
Dither works by automatically adding noise to your gradient, making it appear more smooth. Hence it should (almost) always be one for gradients. That being said, there are other reasons why a gradient looks awful. Which are where you upload it to, what formats you save it in and so on, things like that. If you wanna go and increase the amount of Dither manually, then you'll need to add noise to the gradient manually. You can also try to blur it out, but I haven't had much luck with getting a good result that way myself.


That depends entirely on what kind of element you are making. Because of that, the best way to make (100%) certain it looks good is to try out different things until you find what suits your idea of the design. Personally I find myself using Crisp and Smooth more than I use Sharp.


If I mind it? No. If I will be able to reply instantly? Don't know. Though you are free to send me anything you want me too look at.


On a last note, one thing I noticed (which I overlooked earlier). The title and undertitle are both aligned to the left, rather than the center. Which again makes it non-user-friendly. The reason for that is that anyone who wishes to use this as it is with minimal effort put in, would be required to either use a title and undertitle of the exact same length as the one you gave, or manually edit the placement themselves. What you should've done was to align it to center and then made certain it was placed properly in the center of the design.

Alright noted! Thank you again for your reply, trying to go more into the details when I post another one here.
Wish you a nice day!
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RE: Clean & Professional Thread Design Template

VirtusGraphics
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19-02-2018, 11:04 AM
#10
17-02-2018, 05:08 PM
Lukecetion Wrote:
Dither works by automatically adding noise to your gradient, making it appear more smooth. Hence it should (almost) always be one for gradients. That being said, there are other reasons why a gradient looks awful. Which are where you upload it to, what formats you save it in and so on, things like that. If you wanna go and increase the amount of Dither manually, then you'll need to add noise to the gradient manually. You can also try to blur it out, but I haven't had much luck with getting a good result that way myself.

17-02-2018, 09:46 PM
CranK Wrote:
Alright noted! Thank you again for your reply, trying to go more into the details when I post another one here.
Wish you a nice day!

Remember to first of all tick of "Dither" when using the gradient tool in Photoshop.
[Image: l2q9o.jpg]

Before saving you should also 'Convert to Profile' (under 'Edit') and tick of all three checkboxes
if your workspace is anything other than sRGB (you should work in target colourspace to begin with).

If that doesn't do the trick, do the manual noise way. Zoom in on the gradient until right before
you get the pixelgrid, then click "add noise". The 'Uniform' noise is more suitable and more subtle,
so adjust slider down until you can barely see the noise but at the same time still hides the colour banding.
TIP: The changes are live both in the preview window and the document. Click and hold on the preview
window to see "before", and release for "after" (need 'Preview' ticked off first ofc).


The appearance of the type could be due to the image being JPEG, if you based that assessment of the preview.
I prefer the 'Sharp' as everything, on my end at least, is much more defined. You can easily see it on the hyphen.
It's much sharper, as it implies. If it looks blurry, check the size of the type. Sometimes a decimal value can be the cause.

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