Since there seems to be no small amount of disdain for the new site look I figured I'd post this thread to get everyone's opinions on what to do about it. I do a lot of home graphic design and Photochopping myself, so here's my opinion.

First off I want to say that I think the use of sparkling clear images along with fuzzy ones really detracts from the new look. To see what I mean, look up in the right hand corner and see the dull S2000 (with red highlights), now look at the sponsor ad in the middle and you'll notice they are at the opposite ends of the clarity spectrum. Go to the home page and compare the blue "S2000 International" with the "welcome to S2000 International" signs and you'll see the same thing. Pick any forum and compare Rick's ad with the "New Topic" icon... IMHO fixing this small oversight would ad cohesion to the entire site.

Secondly, the colors... I've no problem with blue, it looks very futuristic as compared to red in this context, but putting it with drab green/grey will never work. I think the shade of grey itself is part of the problem, but this is easily fixed. Whomever decided to put yellow in for highlighting the tabs at the top should be shot, can you say ewwwwwwwww? Kidding, well, kinda'. You want to see color? Check this out...



Now, I'm not suggesting that we make the site look like this, but take a good look, you could learn a lot from this photo...forget Milla for a second (if you can ) and concentrate on the colors used. An example of this type of color use in an S2K site would be...



Anyway, just a suggestion.

Now, lastly I feel that you can go 2 ways with the overall feel of this site...technical/mechanical/blueprint, or the affore mentioned brilliant colors, I do not think they work together well...but that's just my opinion. Maybe if the site was total blue with white on it like a blueprint . Anyway, here are a few examples of technical looking S2K sites...



and...



These are just a few suggestions, I'm sure many people have their own and I'm interested in hearing them, we're all after the same thing you know, a killer looking and functioning site.

Andrew