Keeping new authors.

That’s why it would be a win win for both sides. Envato makes more money and authors don’t have to go through the mess of upgrading their website with shopping carts / e-commerce.

I mean, I don’t think he’s talking about uploading “crap” here, he’s talking about perfectly acceptable themes, but maybe not the “holy grail” themes that some people seem to think they produce here. Different people have different opinions and will like different styles.

Well guys, I think you are trying to make themeforest (and envato, in general) something they are not. They are not deviantart. They are not flikr. They are just a business trying to offer the best of the best on matters of webdesign.

Think of Ferrari. They make GREAT cars, powerful cars, exclusive or premium cars. When you think Ferrari, you think power, class and luxury. People buy their cars because they want to be unique. Now how would those people feel if Ferrari suddenly decided they want to make cars “for the people” , like TATA Motors does (they are famous for making the $5000 car)? Now that car would still have 4 wheels, a steering wheel and could drive you from point A to point B. The problem would be that in this case Ferrari would loose it’s shiny badge of exclusivity and when you would think Ferrari, you would think “cheap” and “like everyone has”

We had a very interesting case study at the university – it was about Wrigley and their chewing gum. I think they created the first chewing gum with fruit flavors or something like that (Juicy Fruit) , but then the war came and they didn’t have any more resources to continue producing fruit flavored, high quality chewing gum. But they had to think of something to allow them to survive as a business, and so they started producing cheap low quality chewing gum. But guess what! They sold it under a different brand name and kept the whole thing a secret. After the war was over and life got back to normal, they revived their fruit flavored recipe. Why do you think they did that?

Sometimes the brand is more important than the money. A $100 bill can buy you a nice meal and a show but a $100 worth of brand is worth much more!

I know envato is on big waves right now and everyone wants a piece of them! I too want a piece of them :)) Ultimately, Envato means us, designers and buyers, and lowering our standards is a solution for making only fast money, but not much money! You know, there are many websites like envato out there! Do a search on google and then take a look at their sales!

Is this your own website?

Personally I’m not sure about the bold yellow (the white/deep grey is not assisting it, and makes it seem slightly garrish) or the enormous browser icons. The footer is also not centred like the rest of the site, and the shadow under the image display is really harsh – needs to be lightened up.

But this is a good start, it just needs some more love

Hehe, I like this critique.. first one I actually liked. I agree with you on the shadow under the image… I see some ways to improve that. And I didn’t notice the footer, thx for the pointer.

I feel kind of iffy about this one. I kind of liked my other rejections better.

Right now I am trying to design to what I think the reviewers tastes are.. and it’s not fun.

It’s not about reviewers tastes, there are minimum requirements and it takes time to learn, that’s it. The first thing I see is that (and it’s maybe a personal taste), those orange and grey colors don’t match. Alignment, padding, spacing in general can be improved, as well as typography (see line height for the text under the big icons and under “latest tweets”.

I didn’t read all posts, maybe someone told you already but on a 1920px screen, the footer sticks to the left. Ok these are just examples, but one of the key (for me) was reading articles here and there and start with typography, you can make the most awesome graphics, bad typo will spoil the whole design.

Anyway good luck

It’s not about reviewers tastes, there are minimum requirements and it takes time to learn, that’s it. The first thing I see is that (and it’s maybe a personal taste), those orange and grey colors don’t match. Alignment, padding, spacing in general can be improved, as well as typography (see line height for the text under the big icons and under “latest tweets”.

I didn’t read all posts, maybe someone told you already but on a 1920px screen, the footer sticks to the left. Ok these are just examples, but one of the key (for me) was reading articles here and there and start with typography, you can make the most awesome graphics, bad typo will spoil the whole design.

Anyway good luck

When it is finished it will have a wide array of colors / styles where you can pick your favorite color. I know orange can’t be everyone’s favorite but I thought it looked good in this situation.

The footer was just a typo, left it out of my wrapper div. 10 second fix..

When you say alignment, padding, and spacing, what do you mean? I keep hearing these words and I honestly do not know how to improve them without an example. (Of course I know what they are). Do you want me to increase the padding? Space some elements more apart? That would make it look horrble.

When you say the line-height for the body text.. do you mean it’s too large? I currently have it set to 25px and thought that it was very easy to read. But I guess it could be lowered some.. no biggie.

As far as typography, what do you suggest? I have the standard sizes for headings and 12px lucida sans unicode for content. I’ve seen countless designs use this approach.

I like the Ferrari example. It can be frustrating sometimes because it seems like Themeforest rejects “win-win” solution that look like they could make everybody more money, but they usually have good reasons to do so. Just like Ferrari isn’t going to come out with a cheap car no matter how well it might sell.

It’s not about reviewers tastes

I do not agree with this 100%.

I would sort of compare the review process here to how the MPAA reviews movies. They watch it and there are no 100% clear guidelines that the movie is judged on, the reviewers just watch it, and depending on how they felt about it, give it a rating.

Now, the director (author) may be given their NC-17 (rejected) rating and maybe even some generic reasons why. But they pretty much just say, “fix it, and you can resubmit if for review”.

Big studios (established authors) are given a little more slack. Their movie may be more likely to get the rating they want as they are the money makers. Whereas independent studios (new authors) are more likely to be judged harsher.

If the independent studio decided to appeal their rating they are told before they do so that they are not allowed to compare their movie to any previous film that may have the rating they want. Unless I’m mistaken, I do not believe you are allowed to compare themes either here. Why is this? It would point out the flaws in the system. Why is is ok for this movie to drop the F-bomb 10 times and it was rated R and you gave mine an NC-17 for the same reason.

I think the same would happen here. Why is it ok for this theme to use this font, but not for me. All of a sudden it doesn’t look good?

What do you think?

Here are some good links, I have no specific suggestion, for me a solid grid and some basic rules about typo helped me a lot, and it can help you to find what to improve