Help! My design sucked.

I've had some feedback that my current HUD dispenser isn't noticeable enough. Pic here:

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=77608

To try and fix this, I've done up 3 new versions of the HUD Vendor, please let me know which one you like. I'm really trying for noticeable without burning anybody's retina's out with an overbright setup.

If no one likes these and they still aren't noticeable enough, I'm going to have to escalate and frame them in Iced Out Bling.

http://www.second411.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/21.gif
http://www.second411.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/3.gif
http://www.second411.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/1.gif

If you want to see it actually in-world (or to grab a HUD), you can see it at:

secondlife://Takalo/138/72/401/

Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!

I think part of your problem with visibility is the choice of colours. Personally, I like the cool blue tones - but they're just not going to jump out at you. Take a look at that first in-world image you posted. What do you see first? The two "for rent" boards on either side, right?

Why? Well partly because they're loud and trashy, for sure - but there's another good reason, to do with the marketing psychology of colour.

Think of a fast food chain - any one. Now, what colours are they using in their logo? There's a reason why the brand images of McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King et al jump out at us from the clutter of messages on the typical high street. Red, yellow, orange - those are the colours of action, of hunger; the colours that get you noticed.

I'm not saying you should just completely switch over to a McDonald's colour scheme to fix your problem - but you might want to try it, or some variant thereof.

See how it looks if you photoshop the exact same design with a stronger colour scheme into that first in-world image you shared. Even laying bright yellow text into a stronger blue background might help. Give it a bit o' bounce (or "boing" as that Sandbox thread up above insists).

All usual disclaimers apply: JMHO, free advice; worth what you paid for it (or possibly less).

/mocc

Those are good suggestions Mocc, I just tried to mock up a few with Yellow instead of blue and they looked sort of ridiculous.

I really don't want to deviate too much from what I already have as I think it looks cool and professional (I'm always trying for things to look "clean". Maybe this just isn't an option when you have to compete with Day-Glo yellow.

I'm especially hesitatant to switch as I think the the white/clean look works well for both the shop build and the website (http://www.second411.com).

I'll play around with it some more and see what other people think too, thanks again.

my take on it,

keep the borders but make them thiner so they dont consume as much "realistate" to me they seem to make the banner look squished in, i find that if im looking at it in the corner of my eye, the banner kinda blubs out

i like the darkest background, common practice (not that im an RL expert in it) is to use high contrasting colors to focus random attention to something within a chaotic scene. While things like silver-blue and white look slick and clean, it at distance angle and focus it becomes hard for the image to jump out at you.

one "weirdo" test i use is to make the image fill my monitor the best it can (psp has a fullscreen mode, not shure about photoshop), get up and walk around my place, and not really look at the computer. premis being: if i can cook dinner, happen to glance in the direction of the computer and the image catches my attention (if even for a moment) it will probally do ok in SL, or if i come back from dinner and THEN remember that the image is onscren it will probally do poorly

back to colors and contrast, what Mocc Spatula said is dead on, but again you are looking for a slick clean look, so an orange and white 7-11 sign probally wont do.

The images you posted here are 256 colors mostly shades of blue and grey so you have to work out a color combination between (i like dark) BOLD colors and still bold but abit more pastel light colors, without turning you clean look into a happy value meal

heres a example thing i did using gradients ( a picture is worth 100 words) upper left is light on light lower right is dark with bold text
cheesefactory.us/samples/test.gif

also notice i outlined the text in black, sometimes its all you need ... heres a cupple crappy examples using one of your signs ...

cheesefactory.us/samples/21bumped.gif
cheesefactory.us/samples/21cartoon.gif

ps:try to keep your images in a powers of 2 resolution, if not it could hurt image quality and when using maps or aligning things its just soo much ezer

Osgeld,

I thought your "crappy" examples were actually pretty good. The black text outline on the letters really did help in making the text pop out.

I hadn't thought about making everything powers of two (still a bit of a newbie) but that makes total sense. I'll definitely be doing that for the next version of everything.

Thanks very much for your help Osgeld.