Today’s post highlights the design of TheDesignCubicle.com by Brian Hoff (whose personal site was featured in this series a few weeks ago). A popular white / black / brick red color palette gets two additional colors – yellow for header, sidebar and footer highlights / rollovers, and light blue for main body hyperlinks. While the design uses consistent hyperlink and rollover colors in each section, there is a negative element when the visitor decides what is a link – four different colors are used for hyperlinks (white, yellow, light blue and black).

The main content is framed by two thing black strips on top and bottom, and two thicker brick red strips on the side. Note the simple patterned gutter strips running along the sides, as well as the muted pinstripe textures extending from the sides of the main header and footer section – creating subtle separation of the main content area. The center column is divided in four parts, with subtle linear grayscale gradients to separate between them. Clean typography, precise line spacing and smaller fonts on secondary elements (metadata, social links, categories) create a pleasant reading experience even giving the large amounts of text paragraphs.