Today’s post highlights the design of WordRefuge.com by EctoMachine. February must be the “Peach Red month” on this series, with this design joining ImageMechanics.com.au, ShellyCooperDesign.com and Kapepur.com for splashes of vivid, vibrant and warm color offsetting a reserved vintage color palette of worn out yellow, faded brown and dark gray. The retro look is reinforced with background textures, heraldic icon (with a few irregularly “colored” pixels), a large stippled drawing in the promo section and an elaborate wax seal rendition of the feed icon in the footer. The transition to footer is clearly delineated by the thick red section with a drop shadow along its top edge. Note how this color is used for everything related to contacting / social interaction with the agency – from the big “get a quote” ribbon in the header to the twitter / rss decorations in the footer.

On a less positive side, the embedded fonts used in the site (serif Albertina with its slanted serifs on lower case letters and bulging Klavika) have poor baseline alignment, grid fitting and kerning. Trace the alignment and gaps on the section headers to see rather sloppy performance of the font, only some of which may be attributed to the Cufon library. Switching to fonts with better support for modern web typography will undoubtedly boost the overall visual appeal of this otherwise excellent nouveau-vintage design.