Help with Web interface Design

[Ticcer]

I'm trying to design a web page for a dance idea my old man has. I have been playing around withe the gfx below, but am kinda stuck with what to do next. It seems a bit empty on the right hand side.

I was going with all nav on the left and ads etc on the right. The concept is supposed to be a dance floor... hence the piano nav buttons. Does anyone have any ideas that might help make it look a bit better?

I was thinking of making some drums - top down for the right hand side to fram up ads. The background is supposed to be a dance floor but it's kinda dark.. I was thinking of using some light text and I didn't want the BG too busy. The logo will have an animated globe in it too.

I also wanted to design an animated disco ball... but that's proving very difficult. All the disco ball gifs I've seen on the net aren't good in terms of colour and size.

This is my first attempt at sommit like this and I'm kinda stuck for progress

Cheers

Ticcer

[Agon]

I would leave the right side empty actually, I think too much clutter is an error people often make.
The rest is looking good so far, I would make the piano frame of the same wood texture as the top banner though.

[Ticcer]

That's not a bad idea, I could curve it round and send it down to the bottom of the page... Would make it look less disjointed.

Re the right hand side... Hmmm If I left it blank, where would I put advertising? Maybe between data in the main page area perhaps. I already have a banner space at the top. Hmmm.. Needs some more thought.

Thanks for the suggestions

Ticcer

[Agon]

If you want advertising on the right side, use a floating frame, I would not include advertising space in the website design.
1- Floating frame = total flexibility
2- you do not know what you will advertise, how big or small so see #1
3- A floating frame will not impact in the design
4- Can be removed or changed without impacting the site design

[Ticcer]

A floating frame... Like what Geocities uses where the visitors can close the frame? Do you know of any sites that use the floating frame, I could look at?

Cheers

Ticcer

[dioxide]

here is an example

http://www.webpencil.com/example_floating.htm

[Souljahboy]

I don't know if you want it to be as wide as you have it though at 1280px. Other than the current suggestions I'd love to see how it would look with some flash incorporated since you have a pretty fun layout developing with so much you could do. That's an option for the disco ball if you really want it and not feeling the use of .gifs.

[zero2]

How about adding a footer at the bottom using the same texture you used for the header.

|--------------------|
|                    | <---- Header
|--------------------|
|                    |
|                    |
|                    |
|                    |
|                    |
|--------------------| <--- Footer
|--------------------|

[Ticcer]

chutia1: Thanks for the example.

Souljahboy: I'm working a rez of 1024x768 for the final site... don't know many who use 800x600 this weather. A crystal ball incorporated in the design would be great.. I'm having a play with flash at the moment.. but I'm a complete novice with it.

zero2: Yeah... I considered that... and may still do it... The data I'll be displaying will go off the bottom of the screen... I could have a scrollable area in the middle I s'pose.. then a footer could be incorporated.

[smuamer]

Well it all looks pretty and nice, but when it comes to web there will be problems!
Size and number of graphics is going to be large and site will load slow.

When i designed my first site i did not care much about size of graphics, but most of users wont wait more than 30 seconds for page to load...so....

Take this not as a critics but as a friendly comment