New site: M W C O K

Hello,
Generally, it looks stylish, clean and simple. However, dark blue color looks heavy to me (may be it was an idea). And strongly determined area of menu, with menu border and then site border - it brings additional heaviness. Menu is very well distinguished with this design, but there are other methods to make menu recognizable and not very heavy.

The smaller white font against the dark blue is hurting my eyes, along with the other way around. The banner part doesn't bother me, but when it gets smaller and less bold, it's a struggle for me to look at.

Also, the briefcase in the banner is puzzling me. What is it for? If it's just for decoration in the banner, it's really odd-looking and stands out too much in my opinion. A good idea to do here (in my opinion, and maybe this is what you mean by including pictures) would be to put a sort of flash or DHTML slideshow-type thing where pictures of things in the city this is for. This would add a bit of visual appeal, break up the monotony, and make that briefcase a little less awkward.

Hope this helps.

Ok I didnt read the reviews above to have a personal opinion on it, so please bear with me if I repeat what has been already said...

First the Logo/Url Name at the top is an image right? Couldnt you use some normal texts there, it can be used and is indexable too, It looks ok now, the blue and white scheme, maybe try a lighter shade of black for the texts parts, it eats up with that deep blue, or maybe a lighter shade of blue instead... At the moment, you used borders to divide the content and navigation, I do suggest to use a the lightest blue, or gray as a background on the nav area instead of that border, I think it would look better.

Thats some small tips at the moment, but I guess the site is not really finished yet? also as my personal opinion, the bevel style at the top doesnt mix well... Good Start though, can easily be edited to work better...

I think the dark colours take away from the clean simple effect.
The above have said the dark blues, to me it's so dark it's nearly black

You can't really tell which is links and which text (a lot of text in right column looks like links)
I'd probably put the domain name on the briefcase, or going into it if you want a bit 'techo'

I don't know, it's just there, just blah, kinda depressing (no offence) but then again I guess it is a gov. type site. Maybe light blues, give it a bit of funk

Whats the flash thing?

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm going to wait and hear from the client as well, and then make some changes.

Busy, the flash thing is going to be logos and links to the sponsors that they've gotten for this site.

I was thinking the otherday that browns would be good for this layout. The name and topic makes me think woodgrain offices with large woodgrain board table ...

Yeah I know I gotta get out more, scary thing is this thought came when I was out