If it's okay to ask for this, I'd love some off-the-cuff, totally
subjective feedback about a web design issue from people I don't know.

Namely: 

1. Which of these web site designs do you like better?  

http://www.cuddlela.com

http://www.cuddlela.com/experiment7.html

2. (if it's worth my price) Why?

3. (if you feel like it and if it's appropriate, or fun) What do
others around you think?

This is a site for a workshop/social-event that I run in LA, and I'm
just interested to know your totally subjective feelings on the
different color schemes, and only for the top part of the page (up to
the text-based part, which starts with "Perhaps YOU can enjoy...").

Of course, if you hate both, I'm out of luck.  But if you think one is
nicer on the eyes than the other, that's what I'm interested to know. 
And then if it's worth it and you feel like it, any insight into why
would be appreciated.  And then, if it seems like a fun thing to do
and it's appropriate, I'd love to know the opinions of any others who
might find this question a fun one to answer.  (Like, "most of the
people around me liked the first/second one better.")

I know this is an unusual question, but you guys are Google and so,
what the heck, I figured I'd give it a shot!

best wishes,
Andrew Schwartz

Hi, 

I'm feeling bold, so I thought I might just up and answer this question for you... 

I like the first one better. The light yellow-orange and blue one. 

Why - well I think the colors in it provide a more appealing contrast.
The second design (your experiment) feels a little too busy and
unconnected. The four main colours are not clearly related to one
another, and just don't seem to sit right together. Unfortunately my
partner and toddler are both in bed, so I can't provide you with their
opinions (although my son would probably say 'good good' for both, as
he seems to think that of most things).

My understanding of design (although I am not formally trained in it,
I have done a lot) and color is that colours from opposite sides of
the color wheel tend to provide pleasing contrasts.

Your blue/orange color scheme achieves that - they partner each other
well. And the tones used of each color are also well matched. The
second scheme is a little more ecclectic I feel, the colors are fairly
randomly distributed on the color wheel, and the colors are all a
little too saturated, thus all seem to be demanding the viewer's
attention.

There is a fantastically visual tool for finding color schemes called
the 'Color Schemes Generator 2' from WellStyled.com
http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html

For more info, there is this page on Wikipedia about color theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_theory

And as I was unable to provide any opinion other than my own in this
case, I will try to draw this question to the attention of other
researchers so they may hopefully provide some additional feedback for
you.

Regards,
Sycophant

Hi andrew101-ga,

I strongly prefer the first one. The more garish colours of the second
one just don't make the text on the page seem inviting to read.

Regards,
eiffel-ga

Variety is the spice of life, they say.

I didn't find the color scheme of the second page harder on my eyes (I
looked at it before looking at the first page).  However I found the
wide white margins on either side of both pages to be excessive.

A colored background to text (even a lighter colored background as in
the first page) does make it harder to read, and this technique should
be used sparingly (for emphasis) to be effective.  I recommend
reclaiming some of the white space in the margins to make the
presentation spread out horizontally rather than extend down the page
vertically. [Note: I viewed the page initially with Javascript
disabled, but enabling Javascript did not seem to change the way the
whitespace along both sides appears.  I'm using Firefox 1.5 with the
NoScript plugin.]

Where you desire to "segregate" a block of text in the flow of a page
or article, sometimes a colored border can be more effective than a
colored background.

regards, mathtalk-ga

Both color schemes seem OK to me, though the first is a bit too close
to baby-boy blue, baby-girl pink, for my tastes.

My main comment is that the typeface is very small, making it too much
of an effort to really read the text...I'm one of those web surfers
who likes to "see" a whole page in the first 0.1 seconds of view time.

Hope that helps a bit.


paf

The first one. The second has very bad colour selection.

Hi Andrew,

I don't like either color scheme! 

I use a different "color schemer" --enter your main color and try some
of the colors that this picker suggests:

Color Schemer
http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html

You set one main color and it automatically gives you many choices of
additional colors that will ALL look great together. You can also
lighten or darken your choices. Try it.