ILoveRides

Sorry for posting so many different versions! Which one do you guys like best?

Alternatively, here's it with a night sky...

Fixed the Ferris Wheel...

^ I think the Ferris Wheel still needs some work. It doesn't look "right" yet.

I cleaned it up a bunch, and tried to take into account everyone's feedback. (Thanks to everyone who is helping!) Here's where it's at...

^ That will get fixed in the next revision... thanks for the feedback!

^^ Whether they love it or hate it, it's cool to get honest feedback! Thanks!

Just the cover...

Oh well. Haha. Here's my design without rotating photos...

I agree with this. I don't really consider it a deal killer, as I think 99.9% of people will understand the cover photo's purpose. Especially the way the left-most photo fades out - to me that screams "not clickable." But it's an issue for the other 0.1% . Currently TPR posts the best daily content. But the cover photo would highlight things more on a monthly basis. A good photo trip report from last month has probably already been pushed well off TPR's home page, and way down on the Facebook page, but with the highlighted images in the cover, you could still have 1 really cool picture from it. Any photo that shows up in the cover wouldn't show up until it's been pushed down a bit on the Facebook page, so redundancy isn't really an issue.

^ As long as it's not daily, I'm ok with this.

You'd really only need to change it like once every few weeks. It wouldn't be like the TPR home page where it changes daily. It'd just have the best few images of the last month or so that convey what TPR is, and what TPR has done fairly recently. It's also REALLY easy to switch those images. If Robb gave me new images, I could probably do it in a minute or two. To switch one of the images you just have to... 1. Resize image height to 100px 2. Stroke 1px white 3. Place it in line with the others

^ Also, it's hard to convey TPR in one photo. Would you put a picture of Piers drinking beer? A picture of roller coaster construction? A picture of a behind-the-scenes tour? An empty train to show ERT? A group event photo? A picture of Gertrude talking? A Donkey? Etc. By having the rotating gallery, you can have several different images to better show all aspects of TPR.

I used the font from my design for the TPR home page so that they'd match. I'll wait to see what Robb says on it. I'm open to changing it, but I do think it would be nice if it matched the new home page. Fortunately the font is always an easy fix. It's kind of a tough choice, because a plain image is really "pretty." But if you go with just a large image, then your company is really no different than every single standard Facebook profile because they all, for the most part, have a large image up top. By adding design elements to the image that relate to your company, you're basically "branding" your page, giving a consistent look that will stay the same and convey what your company is. But then the issue becomes, "is it too stale?" If you just have some brand image that never changes it could be boring. So I think the middle ground is to have some kind of rotating image(s) or background to keep it fresh, while also having some sort of consistent brand identity that's in every image to define your brand and keep the page consistent. That's my 2 cents on the issue anyway.

Newest version...

Made some more changes... 1. Made the large background image super dark, almost more of a design element than a photo. 2. Added a rotating image gallery. 3. Changed the font to match the banner image text in my website design. Feedback? What parts do you like? What parts don't you like? Of the designs I posted on this page, which is best and why? Any input helps!

And since the yellow will probably turn some people off, here's blue... (Red and Green both didn't look good)

Same thing, with yellow around the rides instead of white...

I tried to put some "branding" around the profile photo, but still maintain the large background photo, as some people seem to like that. You could periodically change the B&W background photo.

^ Because the Facebook profile photo is on the left side, not the right. It was vuurvogel's idea to have it look like the person is grabbing at the profile photo. I tried executing his idea with my photo, but without the perfect shot of someone reaching for a ring, head on, at the right angle, it doesn't really work too well. Maybe someone else out there has the perfect shot though!

Here's Vuurvogel's idea. It's tough to find a ring-grabbing photo that works well. This is probably the best one I have.

More iconic, less silly...

And a version on black...

I took out the "rotating photo" on mine...

I don't have a lot of time this week to spend on this (working on a final project for a class). But I did take a stab at it...