nektros - Cynicism in a Hot Dish

After a week of redesign fever, and in a bid to derive the exact perfect term to describe the phenomena of cutting short incessant new design construction in favour of the realisation that flaws in an existing design grow only more pronounced with age and do just damn dandy in the meantime, I present the first post in the kind of series that demands an incessantly rambling opening sentence: a weekly showcase of five favourite site designs.

Rather than posting screenshots of entire sites along with additional glib appraising comments – in a bid to differentiate myself in the most unimaginative way possible from every other showcase post out there – I will instead post snapshots of specific site design elements which I find particularly pleasing, along with additional glib appraising comments of hypocrisy (cancelled out by awesomeness).

1. Darren Hoyt – Header

The entire colour scheme of Darren Hoyt’s portfolio and personal site is gorgeous, and the pink detail in his header serves as a neat highlight. As a plebeian site design enthusiast fed up with the usual all-or-nothing usage of pink (typically wrapped within an overly floral brushed and girl silhouette vector dotted theme of eye tic inducing proportions), I salute a rare example of pink done right.

2. The Old State – Logo

The Old State’s perfectly symmetrical logo caps off a design made up of some seriously lovely typography. While many parts of the logo could have been overdone – such as the side embellishments – it instead successfully complements the whole site while still sitting on the right side of attention-grabbing.

3. Designing The News – Header whitespace

Despite clashing with my aversion to site headers with a height equal to the length of my insides able to digest my hatred of having half of my screen swallowed up by superfluity, there has always been something about excessive whitespace in headers which I have adored.

Adding an appended ‘when done right’ to the last statement, Designing The News has done this to perfection, providing the right amount of breathing space while guiding the eye across the screen through shape (from circular logo to circular hire sticker) and colour (from pink – joy! – logo border to pink RSS icon).

4. The Seen – RSS icon

While it may seem strange to pick out a RSS icon from a flash site overdosing on grunge and sticky-tape-on-sticky-note effects, I contend it as a highlight for the mere fact that it proves largeness and garishness aren’t always necessary to attract attention. In fact, cute-as-a-buttoness and a splash of colour does just fine.

5. MacAllan Ridge – Background

There’s nothing I can really add to the subconscious whistling emitted by anybody’s brain upon viewing a site such as MacAllan Ridge’s. The peeking sunrise in the background valley – to use an adjective which should only be abused where critically required – is sublime.

Next week: stay tuned for five more design bites. And after that, I’ll realise you already get the point. Come again!