Me and KansukeKojima are making a graphics website and I have made a layout in GIMP that I would like a rating for. Here is a picture of what it should look like.

As a note... its not finished yet.... and its very open to suggestions about element placing, etc.....

I like the text reflection for the navigation, but the "box" that they're placed in is too tall, and the C4D render in it overpowers the text. I'd also replace or cut off the C4D render at the top right, for if there were to be content, it would either push the content down or may interact with it in a bad way. You might also get the text reflection to increase in eye candiness (word?) by moving the reflection up a bit and adding a text shadow to the one on top.

We were planning on having a light div for content that would go over the render. I see why you say the render in the nav boxes overpowers the text. I will have to remake the buttons I guess. I forgot to save them as XCF gur.

I think this could look real good if you just use the left navigation links without the cut and repeat of the C4D render. I personally think its an over kill to do that. The layout is good as for the main render on the right hand covering below the content you can have a boarded layer with some transparent background to cover the render for a glassy/transparent look. I think if you come up with a great border it will work. that way you can keep the full size of the render but it wont get in the way of content. You dont want to lower the content just to keep the render because it wont look right if its offset too much down.

the footer will work with the current design. Also is this going to be a fixed width? probably easier if it was but if it was expandable it would be neat.

good job just those two things I think needs changes.

I start with the nav menu first:

-Put the render behind the text
-lower the opacity to the CD4 layer
-Shrink your nav layers a little bit because the menu is to big in my opinion.


Banner:

-Get another C4D render as this this one doesn't work since you have you chop parts of it off and fit it within the banner itself
-That blur effect isn't necessary or rather it's more distracting since it look low in quality

Footer:

-Reduce the size of the footer because your wasting valuable space by making it that big

Overall:

-Need to work with coloring
-Need's separation between content, header, footer, and nav

I recommend going to pixel2life.com and check out their tutorials for graphic web layouts, and the only tutorial gimp has for web layouts is here. So you can use that to get some idea's especially the text reflection as well.

Your off to a good start but I suggest finding gimp tutorials that deal with web layouts, and I would check out the photoshop web layouts at pixel2life to get some idea's as well.