A couple designs

[Cruelty]

i cooked up a couple designs yesterday. i'm lookin for c&c on them, and perhaps ideas of what they need or don't need.

this first one is kinda vibrant. i actually want to change the bright blue to a more legible orange (probably will) but the blue/white combo is just cool to me. anyway, this is for a personal/blog style site. nav is under the header, above the '+'s.

Spoiler

http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/9718/webjc7.png[/img]

this next one is for a music/art/etc site (primarily music). i kinda wish i had used color, because i don't feel like going back and adding it.. but it looks okay b/w (grey is depressing imo) given the context. i'm a big fan of the tiny columns (i love compact, tidy, and simple), so i designed this around that layout before i realized it didn't need the right column. then i didn't feel like expanding the header graphic (so i didn't).

Spoiler

http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/8316/web2kx6.png[/img]

i'm going for simplicity, and staying as far away from web 2.0 as possible. C&C and helpful comments/ideas would be appreciated (moreso on the first, which i actually designed to use myself, whilst the other was just made out of boredom).

 

[Despain]

It's impossible to read the big logo text on both of those, same goes for the navigation. The navigation and main logo should actually be the MOST READABLE parts of a site

 

[___]

Yeah I agree with Des on the readability issue.  One or two backwards letters in a sentence is good, or if you're going for a Slavic alphabet look there are some great free fonts that accomplish it and maintain readability.  I like the concept of the blue on the first one but you need to drop the saturation down about 30% if you don't like blinding your visitors :D  The second one definitely calls to mind everything aural, so it communicates the theme brilliantly.  In the right column, simply don't spoil it by making it too busy.  For instance use the bottom border and background on your content block against your body background (basically make the blocks on the right column mini versions of your content block layout) with a very simplified version of your header for the headings (keep the waveform if you can, looks cool).  Repeating your existing elements is going to go a lot farther than elaborating on them