Today’s post highlights the design of DainaReed.com. While the bokeh effect (along with oversized “Hi there” taglines) was by far the worst thing that happened to web design in 2010, it works quite well here combined with grunge textures and a strong purple color. The overlay outlines of grass blades and plants on top of the portfolio are my favorite element on this page, but unfortunately the portfolio implementation is not too impressive. The right arrow button is not working at all (tried two different browsers), and the transitions are done using cross fades and not slides, which does not play well with the directional arrow controls.

Consistent usage of purple color (with slight hue variations in the footer), fading grungy elements and attractive sans-serif Oceania create a memorable impression, but it feels like the overall structure needs to pay more attention to the visual balance. Viewed on large monitors it appears to lean towards left: the heavy header font is aligned with a tall text section next to the portfolio, followed by large icons shifting the smaller headers to the right, completed with an extra wide email address text field in the right footer column (and column misalignment in the bottom half of the page).