Judging etc.

Alright. So I was kinda dissapointed, because out of nine contestants only five of you actually turned in a layout. Which really sucks because I wanted to have 6 people for the next round. So I'm not going to kick anybody out this round, because then we totaly wouldn't have enough people to finish this contest.

But I will still judge your layout, just so you know what needs improvement for next time. Sound good? Thought so.

Oh, and just so you know. Round two I'll kick out one person, Round three I'll kick out one person, and if all goes accordingly, I should have three contestants left for the final (fourhth) round.

Anyways. On to the judging.

001
It's not bad, but it's not great. I think there's some stuff in there that clashes. The picture is cool and the stripes are a way to make a backgorund less plain. But I think if you're going to set a picture up against stripes like that, you should have some sort of border on it. It gives the eye room for transition between the picture and the stripes. You may even want to consider making the stripes a less bold, shade. They take away from the picture. The dashed border doesn't work around the modules. The dashes are just too much against the striped background. The blog section would probably look neater if the header and body were the same width. It looks too scattered that way. Same with the widths of the left modules. You have them set to a skinny width, but the text in the subscriptions header stretches it, making it look scattered. The links and hovers are nice. Text is legible. I do like the color scheme. I think the font used in the blog header looks nice. Hide the search bar, maybe? And your scroll bar looks really nice, too. I don't know why, I just like the way that looks a lot. I like the picture you chose. I agree with you, the neckline is nice on the girl. It's just an interesting picture to look at. Very nice. Alltogether, I think your layout is pretty good. Just needs to be neatened up a bit.

005
It's not a bad layout. Nice and clean, which is good. Nobody likes looking at a messy layout. I don't know if I would count it as photography. It's more of a banner that you used than a photo, but I'll accept it. You did, after all, create the banner out of photos. But I'm telling you this now. I'm not a fan of those swirly overly photoshopped banners. They are waaaaaaay overused and are starting to look tacky. The navigation up top is nice. LIke the diamonds in between. The color scheme is off. The photos of lindsay lohan you used are warm. Her hair is bright red, her skin is tan, the buttons on her jacket are gold. You should've used warmer colors in the scheme. The purples and blues clash with Lindsay. I like the stylesheet you used. I especially like how the banner and the stylesheet box line up. Makes it look more streamlined. Text is legible. I like the little borders with the diamonds you have between the About Me, A-List, and Credit. It's not a bad layout. It's very nicely done. But I'm going to be honest with you. I see a lot of layouts similar to this. Try to think about how you can make your layouts stand out. Good job, though.

006
Nicely done. I like how you made the photograph look similar to an old-school polaroid. Nice image editing. I like the turquoise colro you used, as well. I like the hover you have over the links. Stylesheet isn't too bad, but can be improved. You see the borders you used around the photograph? It would look awesome if you used the same border widths in the stylesheet, made that look polaroid-ish, too; instead of those really thin borders you have around the left, right, and top. It's not a bad layout. It's very nice and neat and clean. But it's a little too plain. Perhaps to liven it up a bit, you could've made the background color of the modules different from that turquoise? I like the turqoise, as I said before. But maybe there's just too much of it. When using a photograph, take colors right out of the picture. The green of the girl's dress or the trees would have made a nice accent color somewhere. It's a very nice layout. I do like it. But there's always room for improvement.

007
This is a very nice layout. Clean, simple, easy on the eye. Although I do think it's a little too easy on the eye. There is a lot a lot a lot of blank space in there. Above the picture, below the modules, between the picture and the modules. Your eye is drawn more the the empty space rather than the picture sitting lonely in the lower corner or to the modules hiding on top of the page. Lower the modules, make the picture a little bigger, something to fill the void. I like your color scheme a lot. It doesn't feel too green. I love how you edited the image with that rough border. Really cool. I've never seen an image edited like that before. your color scheme is interesting, compared to the picture. Normally the best way to make a layout is to take colros straight from the photo your using. But your colors don't seem to come from the photo at all, and yet everything works so well together. Perhaps it's that the green and the red of the girl's hair compliment eachother so nicely. I don't know. But I do like it. Very nice. So yeah, very good layout. I like it. Definitely my favorite out of the five. Just try to fill that void.

008
A few things about this layout bug me. The keyboard thing behind the blog header. While the idea was good, carried out it just looks a bit tacky. Sorry. And you can't even see the day the blog was posted. Most people like to see when blogs were posted. The actual stylesheet part is off. The left modules and blog modules should line up on top. They should be moved to the left and down a little bit. Because they overlap the picture too much. Maybe even lessen the width of the blog body just a tade. But I like the picture. Very nice. Navigation isn't bad, text is legible, hover is nice. I like the black and white. It's not tooooo bad, but there are just a few little mistakes here and there that desperately need to be fixed.