Redesign #4- Message Board interface

Before:

It is already an established part of our American culture to be obsessed with the internet. People are going as far as speaking in acronyms like "lol" and "omg." A common accelerant for this kind of communication is social networking, including message board indexes. My fourth redesign is the interface of a message board, which are now things that should be really eye pleasing because of growing traffic to online messageboards, especially sports messageboards.

The specific website I chose was Raiderpower.com. I am not  a subscriber to this site, nor a frequent visitor, but I saw potential to make it better. For starters, there is a lot of gray. Gray is not a bad color but there is too much to where it looks old, I would even say dusty for some reason. Most messageboards that I have visited in the past are of mostly white and black because when posting and reading comments it's best to stay simple, even in color scheme. So I made sure to enhance areas where I believe white would have looked better.

Another problem that I noticed was empty space. At the very top black heading bar, on the very left, "raiderpower.com" is emblazened in hot red but the rest of the black bar is not being utilized. The power zone theory will tell you that not using at least a little more of that black bar is a waste of valuable space that viewers' eyes usually gravitate towards. So to enhance it I put a few relative football pictures on the bar to accompany the logo. I made sure not to use the entire bar because I did not want to do so much as distract the viewer from the website's logo.

Also, more space isn't used right under that black heading bar. On the right of the army advertisement, the one with the guy that is screaming (I think?), is an empty lot of a space that could be valuable to advertising sales as well as balance on the page. Without filling that space there is glaring asymmetry. I simply made a homemade, rudimentary ad for that spot.

The problems I had were being able to alter enough of the interface. Using photoshop was very difficult for a novice to try and cut things and add things to the interface design. I think overall the website is no longer what I call "dusty" looking, if not bright now. On a few bars, I changed the color of gray to black because black contrasts well with white as well as matching well with the heading bar. Also, directly under the advertisement I made, I filled in the two retangles with black to match their counterparts below to enhance repetition.