Home page for web 2.0 real estate website

Barometr Nieruchomości (translation: 'Barometr' means barometer 'Nieruchomości' means real estate)

I'm creating a social website for people interested in trends in the real estate (housing) market in Poland.

The primary goal of the site will be to provide a platform for sharing and discussing information about real estate market (prices, trends, charts, statistics, etc).

My focus is on high-quality, relevant content and minimalistic, professional, clean design.

Well educated people in the age range between 25 and 35 interested in the real estate (housing) market. They are either considering to buy or sell a house/flat or are professionally involved in the real estate market.

• The main part of the task is to design menu bar and intro panel. Those two items will be the most prominent elements of the design of the website as the content will be mostly text, pictures and charts dropped on white background
• You will also have to change HEADERS of the content sections to the right and below the panel.
• I would like to keep the way I'm displaying the info in the section below the panel, i.e. items separated by dotted lines, blue links etc
• Improve the voting icons
• The layout for the page is pretty much set. Please check out the development version of the home page: http://barometr-nieruchomosci.pl/.
• We would like to keep the color scheme (i.e. blue, green, grey, silver etc) but designers are encouraged to TWEAK AND ADD colors as they see fit.
• Design guidelines: clean, simple, minimalistic, professional (no cartoons)
• All the texts are in Polish (I'm providing translation to English in a file attached to the brief)
• It should be possible for us to tweak the text and graphics on the panel in the future (all graphics should be in vector format)
• I've attached several version of my log - use the one that suits the design best.

NOTE: I will be giving detailed feedback on regular basis (at least once a day, in the evening GMT time). In case of any questions, please feel free to send me a message.

1

MENU BAR
• I like the compact aspect of the current menu bar on our site: http://barometr-nieruchomosci.pl/ (i.e. the logo is inside the bar). However, the logo inside the menu bar is not a set in stone requirement.
• The menu must work well with our logo which is attached to the brief (please let me know if you need it in a different format).
• Menu items should have a "on mose hover" version.

INTRO PANEL
• Two main functions of the panel: 1) to explain what the site is about, 2) to encourage people to create an account (via the "Create an account" button). I'm providing all the text that should be on the panel (all text is in Polish).
• Our logo AND brand name (Barometr Nieruchomości) can be somehow incorporated in the backgroud of the panel.
• A simple graphics in line with the subject of the website (trends in housing market) would be ok, but be carefule here. I would like to avoid cartoons and keep the design clean and professional. So I'm leaning towards the logo AND brand in background of the panel.
• The panel should have a "Create an account" button with "on mouse hover" version

IMPROVE OTHER PARTS OF THE HOMEPAGE
• keep the overall layout
• improve the headers in the content sections
• improve voting icons (upvote and downvote; Note: that downvote will not alwayas be displayed - it is reserved for users with certain level of karma)
• provide icons to social sites and syndication (see bottom of the page: Twitter, Facebook, Goldenline.pl, RSS feed)

Links to the site (still under development):
Homepage: http://barometr-nieruchomosci.pl/
Page with a chart: http://barometr-nieruchomosci.pl/ch…nsakcyjne/
Page with some text: http://barometr-nieruchomosci.pl/bl…ce-rolnej/