Redesign Number Four

April 01, 2008

As you may have noticed I finally launched the redesign of the site. I had been sitting on this one for what seems like ages, and I knew that I just had to launch it. So, as expected, here’s the write-up!

Awhile back I didn’t get to participate in the conversation about the design phenomenon called “ugly design.” Ugly design, as it’s lovingly called, is a style of design based around the concept that real people and successful corporations have websites that look like they were made by humans and not by some pixel pushing design machine. In short, if it’s corporate or classy it must be wanting something from you and you shouldn’t trust it.

On the contrary, sites like MySpace prove by sheer number of users that real people want to look at non-designed sites, sites that look like they were created by a real person, a very, very design illiterate person.

At first I was skeptical but in the end the arguments swayed me and I finally redesigned my site accordingly. I think I hit the target, which is good because the sky was the limit!

The Header Image

I really started to get tired of the photography at the top. People get enough of that when they go to the photography section, right? So I went for a focal graphic that conveyed what this site is all about. Grunge, ladybugs, flowers and creepy floating heads! I got the color scheme from some of the almost unused shades in the previous header photo, that will give the site some consistency from design to design.

It’s also worth a mention that the logo and the tag line are both bigger. That may actually be a bit too “corporate,” the jury is still out on that one.

Typography

It was important for me to give the viewers something truly appeared to be created by a human. That’s why I chose Arial, bolded. Nothing says “I’m not a designer” quite like bold Arial. Comic Sans was another obvious choice but I felt that it was too common, I am somewhat picky after all. I used Papyrus for all the main headlines because it gives the site an “old world” feel. Zapfino was a runner up, but it added too much prestige to the overall look and feel.

Colors and Gradients

Average people and some designers love gradients, that’s why I didn’t put any in this design. In the end, I felt that probably it would be best to just choose the best possible shade of red and go for it.

The mauve-esque pink was chosen because it didn’t really work alongside the message that this site intends to convey. Better than the “starchy old white”, eh?

Conclusion

That should about cover everything. I hope that you all like this design as much as I do, and if you’re still under the impression that I’m the least bit serious about anything I have written above you might want to check your calendar. It is April first after all.

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