simple/clean web site design

http://www.systemsx.ch

We are an IT team, but weak in graphics design. We can program pages and make them all dynamic (i.e. very few pages/elements). We work for a leading edge biomedical research institute (http://www.fmi.ch), and this web page is to be part of a collaboration on cell plasticity (how cells determine what type of cell they will become), which is described here http://www.systemsx.ch/index.php?id=303. This is part of the systems biology project http://www.systemsx.ch.

We are trying to recruit researchers to work for the project and inform other researchers about our activities. Therefore not too heavy on graphics, just a smooth streamlined site.

Here is a prototype of the site: http://www.fmi.ch/cellplasticity/. These are the logos that must be used (the purple one is the project logo and the blue one is for the overall project. The other logos do not have to appear on the site.

We would like overhead menus, such as: http://www.force10netorks.com, http://www.gnf.org. We do not need a left navigation panel, and we would like the text to be realy text (i.e. reduce images as much as possible). However, probably a "bread crumb" at the top to tell people which level they are in. The upper menu should be relatively tight.

The style of the site should not deviate heavily from http://www.systemsx.ch (unless you have a much better idea), but that is heavy use of black, and probably greater emphasis can be placed on white and the blue (e.g. all white background like http://www.forcenetworks.com).

Overall this should be straightforward, as not much logo has to be done, but we need to get the right color scheme and fonts.

Ideally the winner of contest can also do the basic graphic elements (html and colors) that the come up with and the master template layout (the pages will then be generated dynically). This can be negotiated separately, as we are not looking for too many graphic elements.