New banner

24 comments

• Dom,

  I am an art director and will give you my 2 cents.

  I like your other one better because the image is made up of bigger shapes.  Less detail.  The new image is full of detail, and then you layer it with type and then your menu items to the right.  Visually everything is chopped up into small pieces.

  Ideally, you want to have a variety of shapes and sizes.  Compositionally, I thought your other one worked better.

  Eye of the beholder, though.

• For the life of me I don’t remember what the old banner looked like. 
  When I visit Bettnet, my eyes go straight for the top headline so I never really noticed it.

• It’s the tilt that bothers me.

• I have a different type of problem. This is your website not CWR, and to place that you are the editor of CWR, makes it look like this website belongs to them. Your views regarding Catholic immigration really bother me since I find them uncharitable and extreme; more so, I find them outside of the mainstream of Catholic thought, especially if you read words coming from the Vatican and from the Gospel.

• I disagree DJP. 

  You and I are on the same side regarding immigration; I don’t think much of Dom’s view of it either.

  But I don’t think it’s fair to say that Dom is leaving the impression he is speaking for CWR just because he lets people know he’s the editor.

• I don’t like the tilt, either.

• Uh, the picture is crooked. And I’m not a big fan of scipt-fonts for menus…

  However, the content here is still golden.

• DJP: That’s hysterical since I’ve basically said I don’t know what I think about immigration. I’m curious what extreme views about immigration I’ve expressed.

  Here’s what I wrote on immigration: https://www.bettnet.com/blog/index.php/weblog/comments/my_opinion_on_immigration/

  I said we need to secure our borders to prevent terrorists and drug smugglers from crossing. We also need to prevent illegals from being exploited. And I’ve said that legal immigration is a good thing for this country.

  Oh no! How extreme and uncharitable! I don’t know who you’re talking about but it isn’t me.

• I also work in graphics … however, unlike the others, I like it (yes, tilt and all).

• That makes me all the more proud to be so visionary! 😀

• Needs a tweak:  the words “Editor of…” should be shifted to the right to make them align with “Domenico…”

  It’s a fun pic, but it would work better if you flipped it horizontally so that readers viewing it from left-to-right would be led to the basilica.  As it stands now, it starts from the basilica and moves out into the skewed scene, without a sense of resolution.

• I like it (but I have no taste, keep that in mind!). The night colors are lovely and once my eyes adjust, the ‘tilt’ doesn’t bother me much.

  I think the best things about the picture are the colors of night and the huge crowd gathered, all holding what I presume are candles.

  God, it’s so great to be a Catholic! Thanks be to God!

• I like it alot. I liked the former one too, but this is a nice change.

• Very nice. Good job.

  Quick suggestion regarding the “disclaimer: privacy policy” (also well done):

  You might put a “back to main” link with the actual words. (Yes, I know one can click on the banner and get the same effect, but you’ve got it on the comments boxes so why not here? Otherwise folks might click their browsers’ “back” button and miss any new posts.)

• I like it.  Why?  Dunno, I just do.

• As we staid, stick in the mud, oldsters are wont to say: “Changes cause problems…”

• Eye-catching. Let it run a bit, do a little tweaking if needs be. Have a bit of fun letting your artistic side breathe. We addicts will be back in any case.

• “It looks like the Vatican meets Titanic.  I hope you don’t intend for Leonardo DiCaprio to play Pope Benedict.”

  LOL at this. But I still the like new one better! I like the fact that it’s not a conventional shot, and that it looks like there is a gathering of souls there in “celebration” (sorry to sound so new agey).

• It is, in fact, a photo of the candlelit vigil marking the one-year anniversary of Pope John Paul’s death.

  The reason I tilted it was because I liked the image of the candles. The original was not tilted, but I couldn’t fit the candles in the alloted space and still have an appreciable amount of St. Peter’s visible. The stuff that’s lost to the tilting was mostly darkness and dark buildings.

  I like the tilting because it gives you a sense of “flying” off the colonnade and over the crowd.

  As for the typeface of the heads, they’re exactly the same as before.

  For whoever suggested I should have flipped the photo, anyone who knows St. Peter’s would immediately have noticed it.

  It’s staying for now. You’ll get used to it. I may change it up more often than in the past though.

• It’s fine. It’s your blog; as long as it doesn’t reach out and smack me hard across the face . . . I don’t care . . .

• I like it!  Did you lighten it up?  When I first saw it this morning, it looked really dark.  Maybe the fact that I’m viewing it on a different monitor makes a difference…

• No change. Must be the different monitor. Different monitors have different “white points” and gamma settings. It’s technical.

• The image’s URL matches some pattern in my ad-blocking software, so it’s blanked out on my screen.  Good.

• Gee, I’m sorry you find it so offensive.

  I asked for feedback, but feel free to hold back a little.