My side project: an open-sourced comedy community

http://www.ChompChompDead.com --> it's roughly what happens when you get eaten by a shark. We like to think of it as open-sourced comedy.

Anyways, there's a cast of 10 members who submit articles that are rated by the public. At the end of each week, the lowest rated cast member gets demoted, while the funniest member of the community is promoted.

Basically, this is one of those 'life is too short' kind of initiatives. I just love writing and reading comedy, nothing existed like this before, I knew I could build it... so I did. I'm not really expecting to profit off of it -- I merely wanted it to exist.

I'm launching it with the help of a bunch of screenwriters and comics I know. It's amazing how much the creative world doesn't understand about the online world, and vice versa. Hopefully this is one of those things that helps to bring those two worlds closer together.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy! Maybe you can even try your hand at being funny :)...

However, the design needs improvement. Please stop using that font. Add some color to it. Segment the site a bit more, it seems a little jumbled to me. Perhaps encapsulate each section of the site into it's own box, like the comedy pieces and 'the cast,' etc. I had some difficulty reading the links under your header image. Give your headings/subheadings/piece headings some more differentiation - everything is black and I feel like on the home page, the heading for the first piece is a subheading for 'Fresh Kill.'

Other than that, congrats on launching. Seems like the type of field that could generate a very lively and tight knit community.

As for colour on the site, I deliberately left it monochrome with the intent of focusing your attention not on the surrounding bits, but on the text in the content area. I'm guessing this might not be working in that case!

As for the font -- are you using Safari? When I was cross-browser testing I found that Safari seems to render black courier font almost grey-ishly. The reason I'm using it is because it seems to be the least represented standard font-family on the internet. It feels like it comes from another era.

Overall, the design was going for a 'film noir' aesthetic. Weird font, labeled headings, and contemporary content with a classic broadsheet-looking feel. I could be way off though, let's just say I didn't spend too much time iterating it...

As for your designer friends, their opinion should definitely be weightier than mine. Maybe the monochromatic theme you've given it is blurring the entire page for me.