FWIW I'm also a DJ and play chill sets for my friends. I've dropped Alan Watts & others during the deeper moments...
Colors and layouts are fine.
I'd simplify your "about" message. Your site is for meditation. Think reverence.
I wouldn't put all the songs on a single page. I'd split them up. One benefit: people could share links to sessions that they like or prefer.
I'd use the homepage to point out new sessions and group sessions by duration and/or tone. New stuff should always be highlighted up top. Maybe add a sidebar to handhold beginners. Something like: try it out, takes < 10 minutes, few minutes to get prepared & 7-minute meditation session.
Then on each session's page, I'd have fun with the execution.
The 60 second countdown prevents new users from previewing the music & knowing what they're in for (right mood, what volume to set their headphones at). A preview would be helpful.
Show the large music image here & allow it to provide focus. Do your set-up instructions (headphones, etc) then "click to start 10-second countdown". Have screen fade to black during countdown and quickly fade back in when it's done. Stuff like that.
I'd also want to know what the journey is like. All new age? Does it mellow for a bit and get energetic again? 26-minutes is a long time to sit for something without knowing where it's going.
A few of these I considered already but couldn't because I'm PHP illiterate and wanted to stick with a one page site with ajax but I originally wanted to give each session it's OWN page with full image background, instructions, comments, and share widgets. I decided against it because I wanted simplicity but in the future I DO want to A/B test these ideas.
Another thing would be a free signup that allows you to keep track of your meditation minutes each day. I think it'd be fun to see the minutes rack up.
Icon links instead of Text links is not a clear improvement.
Just like the current Gmail redesign, this Fb redesign has icons (with no text labels) that force you to mouseover the icons in order to determine what you're clicking on. While plain text is not necessarily trendy, it's very obvious what the text link takes you to.
This is how Facebook SHOULDN'T look.. still I appreciate the person making it and sharing it with the world. But come on, a scrolling marquee? ;) It's like I'm in the 90s again.
This project has been around for awhile now. The videos were posted on Vimeo in October of 2009. It could be argued that Google took some cues from Facelift.
- a calendar that doesn't fit within a screen
- jr-designer-style mid-grey-text everywhere
- lots of negative space at the top (so most content falls below the fold)
- layout made for high-res Macs so it won't fit in most 15" Win laptop browsers (hint: pushy toolbars)
- takes the worst parts of Googles redesign (bad grey fades, etc) [Edit - looks like this is pre-redesign]