Today’s post highlights the design of RyanScherf.net. An intricate oversized illustration by Jacob Souva of Two Fish Illustration sets the visual tone for the rest of the site, with its dark cool colors and multi-layered grungy textures. The transition from the dim starry sky to mountains to grassy hills completes with the deep brown earthen styling of the main content – a nice break from similarly styled designs that choose to put the “underground” part in a small footer. Consistent use of desaturated browns, greens and blues continues throughout the rest of the site, with decorated separators and wooden texture of the contact form reinforcing the nature-based main illustration theme. Note the two translucent static elements along the left edge of the site that allow quick navigation in this single-page site; the only usability issue with the main navigation strip is that it does not provide any visual indication which icons scroll the site content and which icons lead to external social sites. The site footer can also benefit from extra polish around the budget selector in the contact form and twitter widget in the footer – both stick out like a sore thumb on an otherwise elegantly styled site.