Today’s post highlights the design of the landing blog page of CafundoEstudio.com.br. Attractive large illustrations frame a grid with cells of variable sizes, some leading to the blog entries, and some leading to social networks. Smooth rollover effects, muted monochrome theming of social icons and a perfect palette of soft vintage purples, oranges, yellows and blues showcase the capabilities of modern web design.
If i had to point one problematic part, i’d say that the navigation menu is a little misleading. A downward pointing arrow usually indicates drop-down content, but in this case clicking on one of the navigation buttons pushes the content down and reveals variable-height rich header. It’s an interesting experiment, but reduces the overall usability.
Today’s post highlights the design of MitchellShepherd.com. Combining dark vermillion and bright red, the design features an attractive combination of textures, lighting and bevel effects to frame a rather spartan number of visual elements.
Today’s post highlights the design of CofaMedia.com. The design combines two bold elements that work exceptionally well together – large swaths of deep pink and slanted delimiters of main content sections. The deep pink can be only rarely seen on the portfolio sites of design agencies; however, combined with a three-tone monochrome scheme, clean typography and themed icons it presents an appealing, vibrant and daring look. The slanted lines are present throughout the site, from the main header navigation menu items to the portfolio and partners‘ pages. The testimonials section is, in my opinion, the only weak element, with a rather awkward arrangement and styling of the quote bubbles, and usage of small italic fonts on large text paragraphs. On the other hand, the typography, spacing and usage of color in the footer section is simply excellent.
Today’s post highlights the design of John.ONolan.org. A static full-height photograph of John anchors the content (further framed by thin header and footer strips). The rich selection of saturated colors plays well with a rather large number of images, where each section uses a single color for the oversized header text and the smaller “more” button. The same colors are used on the social links below the designer’s image, with a great rollover effect that grays out inactive links. Also note a nice cross-fade effect on the “Photos” section, and a subtle drop shadow border that surrounds the large photographs in that section.
On a less positive side, the design shows the perils of choosing a badly designed Neuton font and using it on the large headers. It severely impacts the crisp look, with its extremely sloppy kerning (see “Publication”) and slanted serifs that lead to poor grid fitting.
