Today’s build highlights the design of 2010.BuildConf.com by Andy McMillan (@goodonpaper). After reviewing the sites for HDLive 2010 and dConstruct 2010, it’s time for another designer conference site. This design combines a simple color palette and nicely balanced grid to highlight the conference speakers and extra material.

Spare appearance of lime green for section headers and hyperlink rollovers allows using it to draw attention to two action buttons – one if the header and another in the footer. The content is laid out in a four-column grid, with different sections switching to different column spans. Note how the first row of the speaker thumbnails is “missing” the first cell – to balance out the heavy logo just above it; this creates a “content diagonal” that goes from the top left to bottom right. A counter diagonal that connects the action buttons in the header and footer sections brings the balance back to center. The last two sections feel a little off in this regard – with awkward content in the twitter / blog section, an extra wide separator below the “Blog” caption, and off-grid positioning of the footer content. The entry headers in the “Fringe” sections lead to the full content, but are missing the muted double arrow icon found below the speaker thumbnails in the section above; it feels that the UX consistency would be worth a little bit of extra visual noise here.

Be sure to visit the “Workshops” and “Fringe” pages to see consistent application of the same principles throughout the rest of the site. This is quite commendable given how some designers spend a lot of time on the landing page at the expense of the rest of the site.