Design Comments, Please?
I’ve just remodelled much of the site. It has a new look, new pages, new colors, and new features all over the place–so tell me what you think. Comments blasting the site, suggesting improvements or features, and etc will be implemented! I know yesterday 1034 of you visited the site, so by the end of tomorrow I expect a minimum of 500 2 comments.
Update:
According to the design trends of 2005, I’m hit and miss here. Let’s take a look at how these forecasts apply to my recent redesign:
Thematics:
Freshness: New ideas, new colors, new layouts, and new approaches.
+1, I have a bad habit of continually making changes and improvements to the site. I randomly stay up until 4 AM to add a new feature.
Effort: Minimalism is out; detail is in.
-1, The current layout is rather detail-sparse. It’s cleancut and clear, but it’s not complicated and gritty.
Professionalism: Site users have little patience for amateur design.
+1, My site looks professional. Thanks Michael and Matt.
Looks aren’t everything:
Out: Retro; Swiss/Euro; Minimal; “that standards-compliant look”
0, I’m in their “out” group, but I disagree. Their in alternatives aren’t that appealing.
Laydown:
The pure 5-piece website (header, menu, sidebar, content, footer) has worn out its welcome; designers are more willing to vary from the standard. Faceted classification becomes commonplace in sites with a large quantity of dynamic content (including personal sites).
+1, I’m all hot for object-oriented design. That’s what the archives, plugins, news (front page) are for. Content is organized by type, not by hierarchy.
Colors
Color of the year: Brown
Tech grays and blues take a sabbatical; may not be back soon.
-1, I’m using blues…
Lots of “in-between” colors (yellow-greens, red-oranges, etc.) used to achieve fresh looks
+1, Coupled with a strong palette of leafy greens and earthtones!
Type, Text:
Designers realize that Verdana is ugly; most stop using it.
+1, For my serifs…
The novelty of Georgia as a body text type wears off; still used for headings.
+1, I still use the “big G” in my headings.
Coding sk3l7z:
Table-using designers increasingly seen as belonging to a lower caste.
+1, It’s all table-free here, except where data is presented.
sIFR reintroduces typography to sites with dynamic content.
-1, I should jump on the sIFR bandwagon, but one look at Shaun Inman’s site is enough to disbar that notion from my brains. All that flash takes eons to incrementally load, making me wonder what’s going on up top.
Final Score: +5, not bad. My priorities for the next design: More detail, more ways to get into the content, and some flash tricks (sIFR?).
| This entry was posted on Thursday, December 9th, 2004 at 4:22 am and is tagged with faceted classification, object oriented design, leafy greens, menu sidebar, bad habit, cleancut, header menu, design comments, news front page, minimalism, design trends, personal sites, grays, freshness, dynamic content, oranges, professionalism, new feature, hierarchy, layouts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback. |
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sIFR rocks.
Yes, the headlines load last, but that’s probably the case if you used images for your special font display headlines too. sIFR is much more lightweight than images. Most good designers will use, at most, one or two fonts. The sample page that comes with sIFR uses SIX – so of course it looks like it takes longer to load.
Since rendering is done on the client side, the speed is probably somewhat determined by the speed of the users machine to render the page – not in the download time.
Quite purty!
But you’re making me want to re-design mine now.. wah…
Hmmm. I wish I had OSX to test and fix, but I don’t… Is there any way to run a VM? Does VMware have one for Macintosh?
Update: I can check this later with the KHTML rendering engine using a Knoppix Live CD I have lying around…
I’m on OSX Safari and the content area is only an inch or so long and the text goes down onto the grey background
The logo is garish, but I’m a programmer. Graphics work tends to elude me, somehow. It just always gets away. Thanks Jeff and Orange for the suggestions.
I will try and remodel the logo on the next pass… or just bribe some innocent graphics student.
Hey there…
Just noticed this site in my referral logs. Love the design. Looks great. I like the header image a lot.
I do agree with orangeguru to some degree about the logomark effects, but if it suits you, stick with it! It does seem a tad “flashy,” though, comared with the rest of the site’s minimalist, sleek look (which I love).
Great job!
Kubrick out – Bäck in! That’s much better … I like the overlapping leaves … the EB is a bit toooo photoshop for me and does not correspond with the rest of the page … try a different type without shadows and 3D effect. On the comment pages there is a white line between the header and the leaves …