Every month this series is tracking the latest design trends and collecting the best examples of modern web designs. Here is the list for April 2011 with over a 1000 links from 40 aggregator posts:

Today’s post highlights the design of Essaouira-Pub.com. The landing page has a nice mix of vintage elements, especially in the usage of textures and background patterns. These elements bring a nice touch to the otherwise imposing pink framing of the main content, mixing noise speckles, fading waves of concentric circles and a three-sided radial dot grid. The color palette feels a little bit overloaded, with vintage pinks, browns, blues and greens switching between background and foreground; perhaps removing the large swaths of brown from the right column would result in a better visual balance, bringing it closer to the printed poster look. The balance is also perturbed by the switch from the three column grid in the main section to the five column grid in the footer. In conclusion, it would be nice to see a little bit more attention to the content arrangement and bring it on par with the overall visual styling.

Design, uninterrupted #181

April 27th, 2011

Today’s post highlights the design of NJDay.com. I like the simple and unassuming color choice of this single page site and the nice way that the main section text seems to flow around the portfolio highlights. The barely noticeable vertical background gradient with faint traces of yellow adds a nice touch of color to the main section, followed by the switch to white-on-black footer that aligns to the same three column grid.

The typography seems to strike an awkward balance between the embedded Gill Sans used in the header, the increasingly bland Arial for the body and image-based title and footer ampersand. The last two seem a particularly brittle contraption given the ever increasing capabilities of web typography and CSS selectors. On a more positive note, don’t miss the “Show full portfolio” element below the right bottom corner of that section to see a nice expanding effect. Showing a circular download progress indicator framed in the matching outline is a nice touch to address the portfolio entry switches; cross fading to the loaded image is the perfect complement in this transition.

 

Design, uninterrupted #180

April 24th, 2011

Today’s post highlights the design of EightyTwoDesign.com. It’s a nice blend of vintage elements, from burnt irregular textures to vignettes, from the hatch illustration style to a great looking letterhead font in the header. It’d be even more interesting to see a step away from the Times New Roman used as the body font – and experimentation with retro-styled web fonts to further highlight the vintage elements. Improving the legibility of white text on very light sea green footer would also be welcome.

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