nektros - Cynicism in a Hot Dish

Marking our second weekly descent into five inspiring snippets of site designs impressive by and large, we’ll be focusing on interesting usage of colour and imagery, and a few examples of the spurning of conventional layout dimensions applicable to a personally-held sentiment of “Aye, ye sootheth my frickin’ return sweep¹ synapses”.

1. Stolle’s Tricycle Terror – Colour scheme

At first glance, the Tricycle Terror’s product page seems quite a mark off unique or groundbreaking. It’s a fortunate thing, however, that the temptation to shoe in a more ostentatious layout or illustrative background was kicked to the curb. The site’s unique colour combination of meticulously chosen shades of aqua, yellow and orange works more than well enough in setting the desired ‘vintage childhood’ mood.

2. Timoni.org – Sidebars

Refined and regal.

An immediate impression along these lines is all that can be said for Timoni.org upon absorbing its solitary emblem, drop-cap header typography, eye-pleasing ‘skinny’ content and fleuron embellishments. Compounding this, one foot is firmly placed in ‘who would’ve thought of it?’ territory with the placement of the site’s sidebars in two banners encompassing its header. It’s a refreshing break from the usual so-called innovation out there consisting of such design elements as ‘nature elements on top with dirt and roots in the bottombar and footer’, and ‘logo sticking out top left as a name-tag/tape’.

3. Silvia Victoria – Header

Silvia Victoria is another non-complex structured site with a single outstanding element placed less for show and more for getting the services offered by the site across. Its header is more than just a pretty thing – its intersecting watercolour landscape and lady portrait on collage setting conveys its slogan of ‘Paintings, Drawings & Collages’ in an understated and effective way. Statements against nature, sticky tape and top-left logo placard design elements which may or may not have been made in the immediate past are, in this case, retracted, if only to allow us all to learn the definition of ‘mercurial’.

4. Ian James Cox – Logo and logo trail

Along with another case of ‘skinny’ content, Ian James Cox’s site has something else pleasantly unconventional in its logo. Prescribing to the school of stating the obvious in light of the above image as I mention this, it’s a seagull carrying the site name in its talons. Adding to the eye-catching mix, a white background trail subtly highlights the site’s other targeted areas – a short blurb about the author, and a feed icon linking to the site’s feed which again proves (carrying on from last week) that there are other ways of making an element pop than through its size.

5. Amanda Harbaugh – Background

Rounding out our list this week, sometimes I’m able to put aside the question of a design’s relevance to its site’s subject matter, drop my jaw for a moment, and utter, “Background. Shiny!” This is one – and pretty much not ever the last – of those times.

¹ “Return sweep: moving our eyes from one line of type to the next.” – This definition is nowhere to be found online. The crime of there being no definition of the common phenomenon of “Why am I able to measure the time it takes me to read from one end of the screen to the other in light years?” is definitely one of the Internet’s worst.