New EDU 2.0 Home Pages

We're going to refresh our home page design significantly in about 3-6 months, but in the meantime we've decided to improve the color schemes and layout a little. The main ideas were:

1. Make the EDU 2.0 for School site more appealing to higher education by moving away from the current "colorful" version.

2. Make the EDU 2.0 for Business site more professional by moving to a darker monochromatic appearance.

Here are the two leading candidates:

EDU 2.0 for School (http://www.edu20.org):

EDU 2.0 for Business (http://www.edu20.com):

Any feedback is much appreciated!

Comments

[Sonny Lacey]

Very cool, Graham! I, for one, like both, but tend to like the gray scheme better. For one, the gray heading backgrounds de-emphasize the amount of horizontal lines that pop out (the sectional headings). There are about five horizontal headings, and the highly saturated blues simply draw my eyes more along these lines and snap me out of the content (if that makes sense). Why do you feel you need to move away from the original color(ful) version?

[Graham Glass]

Hi Sonny,

Thanks for the feedback. We're thinking of using the monochrome version for the business site, and the blueish version for the school site. The reason for moving away from the colorful version is that we're trying to appeal to higher education as well as the high school marketing, and the colorful version might not appear "professional" enough.

Cheers,
Graham

[Martin Kramer]

Hi Graham,
I really do like the blue version aiming for higher education - and I still like the colorful version for the K12 market! I'm not too sure about the business color scheme, though - it looks a bit too dark for me.
For your .org branch, I'd be happy with both the colorful or the blue color scheme.
All the best,
Martin (AUT)

[malia]

Hi Graham! I'm partial to the blue one for School/K12 and Higher Education. Softer blue/greys tend to be easier on the eyem however I don't like the turquoise text. If you can make the text black, then I think its a winner.

I think a lighter grayscale, or deep blue, instead of those harsh black bars for the Business site might look more professional.

Just my 2c! NZ is Wondeful and I had an interview last week. Luv malia