My site for established direct-mail newsletters looks amateurish to me

Too many fonts for me, I’d try for a more uniform look.

your site doesnt really look like a blog to me, as much as it looks like one of those “make money quick with this book” pages. I call those spammy when I end up on one of those, and promptly move on.

Part of the ‘problem’ with what I *see* is the large font sizes.

Thank you both so much. Actually it is only two fonts (one serif, one sans), but I guess it looks like more because of different colors, bold, italics, etc. and I can address that as well as the overly large font comment.

Anybody else? It’s such a funny thing — I do know a professional-looking site when I see one, but I just can’t figure out what to do to make mine one of the good kind!

Sandy, you have a very nice clean design here. I think it looks really good, you just need to clean up the fonts and colors a little bit to give it more consistency. Overall you have a very sharp design. Here are some ideas:

Clean up the top section. Make everything left justified and the same font and size. Put the “Advertising just…” statement on one line. Don’t bold the bullets and get rid of the green box outline.

To much text with serif fonts. Try changing to only headings as serif and everything else sans-serif the same size.

Green headers on right are a little simple. Try changing to a subtle gradient background, dark to medium green.

Add some color. Instead of just white, blue, black and green, pick a more satisfying color scheme. Check out a site like Color Scheme Generator 2

Give the background a little color, maybe a very muted green.

Don’t have you links in blue. Change it to maroon, olive, green to match your color scheme.

Get rid of the grey gradients near the top.

Give the header “Our Town” a colorful background

Steve, thank you so much! I can see that those small changes would add up to really professionalize the look of the site. I had been trying to keep the site looking like our print newsletters (two colors, black and green, on white paper), but really, I think that the site can have its own look and actually it’s probably time to update the print publications anyway. And that color scheme generator is really great! Thanks again SO much. –Sandy

I agree about the fonts, I don’t even want to try to read it.

The font inside the “Placing an Ad” block is too big.

@cool sam
Well thank you for your contribution, one post and FOUR spam links to some boring site.
Direct mail services eg, the buying and selling of email addresses.
Have a nice weekend all.
mike.

PS. Important, by direct mail I refer to Cool Sam and NOT the original poster, who merely wanted design advice.

@ mikey1
huh? where?
just kidding – I deleted the spam post
mikey1 is not crazy…at least this time. :>)

Hi, thanks Samboll, LOL I was starting to wonder, what with my sites and my email, I’m starting to dream of spam, thanks to a client who has given out my cellphone number, I now even get it on my phone, day and night, oh well, I have next week to look forward to, I’m going to see the touring production of Spamalot, the musical ??