When the alarm clock goes off at seven, i wake up and wearily find my way to the kids room. Exhausted from the late Sunday evening, they hardly wake up when i pick them up and put them in our bed. Weaving in and out of their dreams, instinctively clutching their worn out plush toys, they lay next to me, one on each side. Turning every now and then, catching the last few quiet minutes, still caught in the pretend world of their fairylands. Their little hands rest in mine, warm and defenseless. Half smiling at whatever figments are passing before their eyes, unaware of the sublime beauty of the moment. No fighting over the same toys, no precarious jumping on the sofas, no danger of splashing watercolors on the carpet.
With every minute that passes i know that we’re going to be late to daycare and i’ll get stuck in traffic on the way to work. Somehow it all does not matter. In a few years these moments will be no more. It all seems so far away now, but it is inevitable. And so i lay there, listening to the soft breathing of two small pieces of me, one on each side. It costs nothing and is worth everything.
These are my Monday mornings.
Today’s post highlights the design of ACosmin.com. Thick overlapping diagonal strokes in the header follow a recent trend noted in an earlier entry, and a warm four-color palette is put to a creative use throughout the visual elements, section headers and clickable elements.
On a less attractive side, the all-caps bold serifs are too heavy to be used as blog entry titles, especially given very short cut-off length of entry descriptions. The all-caps are also overwhelming the typography of the site footer, with ragged unevenness of double dotted lines that adds too much visual noise without serving any real purpose.
Today’s post highlights the design of FarCoast.com. A full-size Flash-only site features a slick sequence of fades and transitions during the initial load and navigation between the different sections. Warm and inviting photos of coffee and tea cups on the background of coffee beans and tea leaves, intricate multi-layer background patterns and worn out vintage color palette of beige, light brick orange and desaturated light blue serve as a perfect backdrop to precise typography that combines simple serifs with retro handwritten fonts.
The absolute positioning of the graphic elements is the only glaring shortcoming of the design. On screens smaller than 20″ the visuals are cut off on all sides, with no option to scroll either vertically or horizontally. This becomes particularly painful on smaller netbooks in the “Blends” section. Another usability issue can be seen in trying to navigate between different sections as the current section is being loaded. The mouse clicks are ignored until the load is complete – which make time significant time on slower network. It is unfortunate that such a great design is hampered by these issues.
Today’s post highlights the design of Eighty8Four.com. Keeping all the content above the fold, it follows a rather safe and frequently used layout. The top part features a typographic logo, simple navigation menu and three-item portfolio slideshow, all set on the backdrop of still popular bokeh with saturated orange palette. The slideshow uses attractive transition and rollover animations, as well as nice translucent overlays for the navigation arrows. The bottom part highlights the agency programs, sessions and recent blog entries. An overall pleasant, but quite forgettable visual appearance.
