proposed design...

ok, here's a design i've been working on for the site. click for a larger view.

let me explain my reasoning for things (I'm going to use numbers just so I can organize my thoughts):

1. there are three main groups in our audience: people from the neighborhood, foundations that might give us grants, and activists. I chose graffiti for the banner and and the bright colors to suit the first two groups and basically ignored the third group. I also made it look child-friendly for the obvious reason that a lot of the people from the neighborhood taking advantage of the space are children or parents. if I should make a greater effort to appeal to activists, let me know. the more activist-related stuff I add the more evil it looks though, because it's making a cute thing look subversive.

2. the banner is going to have several different photos that will rotate randomly on each page click. I think we can use flash for this, but I've never done it. I'll figure it out though. I'm going to keep the same graffiti over it I think, although I was originally thinking of having different designs that all read "123" but...

3. the numbers 1, 2 and 3 were surprisingly more difficult for me to turn into a graphic than I anticipated. for instance, they all have bottom pieces, which run into each other when squeezed together. also 1's are easy to make look like 7's and 2's like z's. if legibility wasn't an issue, I'd have a lot more fun with it. this is part of the reason I'm thinking of just sticking with the one.

4. the original color scheme sarah suggested was red, yellow, green and black. green and red are complementary, meaning they can optically mix to make a "sparkly" effect. on a painting this is nice, on the screen they'll mess up your eyes after staring at them for a while. blue i think is better for this- and i think it provides a relief to the warm colors than green. I'm going to use green for the links so they pop out from everything else.

5. the main font is helvetica. it's the most common, simple font there is. the title font is arial black, another common font that's basically the boldest common font there is. the primary links are cooper black, another common font, but not common enough (i'm going to have to make images of them). the reason for this is I want them to stand out, I like the way they're sorta kid-friendly with the rounded serifs and it's also an homage to old breakdancer stuff, which is relative to a very hip-hop oriented neighborhood.

6. it might say "community space" or "123 community space" on one of the clouds in the banner, I just haven't gotten to that yet.

so, I'm interested in what people think. i'm a little sensitive about this sorta stuff, so please don't just rip into it if you dislike it, but constructive criticism is welcome. it's still a rough draft, the banner's still a little rough around the edges, I just wanna get feedback before I put more work into it.