Natural Variety

Nice site. I don't like the colours much but that's just me.

the worn look on the main content looks a bit out of place, if it was pure white it would look a little more professional in my opinion.

i like the divide with the fade at both ends.

i really like the bar that is in the background and the width of the window.

All in all a good site but my main problem with it is nothing changes, the image at the top stays the same and it seem a bit bland.

Well, I'd like to start off by saying it seems a bit more bland than the other designs of yours I've seen (yeah, all 2 of them), and that the colours are very reminiscent of IWD (not neccessarily a bad thing). Also, the stripe that levels with the header caught my attention the most- maybe something similair could be done with the footer?

Maybe the text could the be softened up a shade, and maybe their could be list style images placed so they don't stand out as much. And seeing as how soft everything is, the header color might do well with some softening.

It's a nice, user friendly layout, very appropriate for a business site. It's easy on the eyes, and legible. It's not exactly 'wow,' but it looks nice, and makes for an experience where the user can navigate easily, so I suppose this doesn't matter. By the way, is that a Jack Russell Terrier in the header?

I like the little details Ryan, that's something you always know how to do. The light gradient background for the content, the nice use of colors is great, all earth tones. maybe you could use some FIR for the heading text and use a nice unique font :).

All in all, looks good with all the subtleties(sp?) you've got going on.

I really like it, but my only comment would be to make the valid xhtml and css on a new line. It looks sloppy as is. Thats my only "design" issue. Looks good. *gives teh neczy seal o' approval* =D

What's with the mailto link if you have a contact page set up?

And I just noticed that you have arrows pointing to each of your menu items and the same type of arrow pointing to the doamin name way at the top, but it isn't a link.

I'm interested to know why exactly you're not using your own layout technique for the side-bar.
http://www.ryanbrill.com/floats.htm

And there's no skip-nav link.

Oh, and there's not really any use for the #sidebar <div> tag, you could do everything with just the <ul>.

Also, perhaps SIR would be better than FIR. ;)
http://www.mezzoblue.com/tests/revised-image-replacement/#shea

How about some numeric accesskeys for the navigation? Nothing fancy, just 1-5 would do it.

Perhaps a definition list for the order page rather than headers and paragraphs, although headers and paragraphs isn't exactly wrong.

Sorry for saying all these bad things, I'll say some good things now.

The design is really very good, I especially like the top banner, I'm not a dog person (more of a cat person myself), but that header is just ... good.

I especially like the "cross" on the page, lines of colour for the sidebar and header.

Very nice work, I look forwad to seeing some of your future eye-pleasing designs.

I'll try not to be repetitive, not saying what others have already said. But if I do, my apologies.

I like the earth tones since it only seems "natural" to use them for a site called "Natural Variety". I too like the horizontal bar going the width of the screen at the top. It really catches the eye. The horizontal bar reminds me a bit of Ryan Sims' website. He's got a bar that really catches your eye, too.

It seems you're trying to keep the colors somewhat muted, but the links on the left feel very bland. Especially since the design next to each one of them is almost the same color as the links themselves. Along that same vein, I don't really care for the extra site title above the picture of the dog. Back to the links, though, could they be the color brown that's in the logo?

Can you replace the font you're using for h2's (and maybe even h3's)? The font in the logo doesn't seem like a logo everyone would have installed so that may be out (as far as using that font for the headers), but I'm just not feeling it with the the Times New Roman. And just like the links, could the h2's be a different color, maybe the green from the logo? Using the same colors in several places wouldn't look so bad to me, it might help pull the site together visually.

I know I've been negative on just about everything, but don't get me wrong. I like the site. Your ability to design makes me jealous. Your knack for the small details makes me very jealous! :)

You should encourage them to put an address on their page: I'm not buying elk meat unless I know where it came from. =-)

Hey Ryan,
It's neat how you can let the other guys look over your site for feedback. Let me know how you would like to change anything on the site and lets see how it looks. I am open to trying anything on the web site. Thanks for helping with this project.
Dave

its also a bit strange how similar your website is to http://www.asotavento.com.ar/ quite strange seen as you enjoy to give people a little grilling when their site looks barely like yours. it makes me sad.

i don't remember saying you stole it. i remarked on the similarity of the site. i haven't accused you and i dont plan to. i very much enjoyed your good designers steal article and the moll links were useful. and as for the grilling i included a hint in my original post "it makes me sad" a previous post of your archives. i find it remarkable that that article still exists since the release of the good designers steal article. that follows the same theme, wouldn't you say?

well im sure thats been resolved now. but i dont think the web designer of the other site would be happy to see the same style of his site used in one of your business sites...

Hello Ryan. Hello Ron. Well, it was weird to found a link to asotavento.com.ar here, I did that site for a client and let me say that I don't feel that you're stealing my design. There's some similarity in the layout but it's ok (it could be a ton of sites with a similar structure). I started the idea to layout the site from a printed mag, but after a few minutes the original idea became to other thing.
That's all. See ya'

uh oh... Looks like you've gotta implement some sort of anti-spam system now. The big question is are these automated or not..

Edit: Comment spam deleted above this comment.