new minimalist design

hey what do you guys think?
this is my first attempt at this kinda stuff, i know it can be better, but do u think it has the potential?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v417/majd-gfx/minimalistic.jpg

i decided that design looks really gay.


how bout this?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v417/majd-gfx/minimalistic_design2.jpg


im just messin around seein diff. resutls...

i decided that design looks really gay.

Really? Does it have relations with other designs of the same gender? Or perhaps it just looks happy...

To the point: Watch the lingo, eh?!

Your menu items are bunched up very tightly. Also, serif fonts in all lower case tend to look a bit weird.

Can't say I'm a big fan of either. Hard to use, no contrast. Sure you said a "minimalist" design, but you could do that with a white page and no text. I'd add a little color. Perhaps making the borders with a hint of blue???

that's not a bad idea actually, i'll play with it a bit...

Try adding a content area before saying it is minimalist. What and how the content area is laid out alone defines whether it is minimal.

As it is, I would say it is far from minimal, so in terms of a minimalist critique view, it doesn't score very high. There is too much happening.

Are you just showing that as the design for now or is that gonna be the actual color ? I am not a huge fan of grey. I'd say add some color to make it punch out more. Just my 2 cents.

Don't like either of them really. The first one is a bit pale, and the "beauty of simplicity" bit looks a bit weird somehow. The second one is a bit "heavy". The borders don't seem to fit together - neither of the designs do anything for me.