Archives
- This Months Gallery listings
- October 2006
D. Keith Robinson’s Blog
Nice use of uncommon colors, very reminiscent of a sunset.
In conjunction with the pixel art of the parrot on the top bar, it creates a nice mix of technology and tropical.
There are no categories, so you have to browse via archives which is less than optimal, but his user group probably reads his blog on a daily occurrence.
No trendy rounded corners, reflections, etc.
Airbag Industries
Airbag Industries really has a design all of it’s own.
It’s a slightly faded retro look, that is not overly graphical nor overloaded with typographic styling. Some mild pixel style art, and most of the focus on the writing.
The design is really about subtle and effective communication.
The Net is Dead
The Net is Dead has a very uncommonly used design element now days, and that is a photography/rendering as the major design element instead of solid colors and shadows/reflections which simulate depth.
It is good to see designs that incorporate other art styles into the web.
What really attracted me to this design was that the top banner doesn’t FEEL like a web page, which very few sites do now days.
Fall in Tennessee
A very striking site, that really communicates fall and nature.
The use of the large photo as a background not only screams “nature and fall” , but also creates an illusion on depth with out using standard methods such as shadows and reflections. My only gripe about the site is that it is not extremely clear what it’s purpose is.
Beyond the obvious “Visit Tennessee” – it takes some hunting to figure out that you can learn more about vacations (the menu’s really don’t convey this clearly).
The Craft Network
This design does fall pray to the commonly used “diagonal line” trend so I was a little hesitant to post it at first.
However – the use of rough borders in conjunction with the coupon style “enter the website” really gave it a paper feel with out over doing it. It looks like the header and enter section really were torn out of a magazine.
The use of pink and brown is also a very uncommon color combination – but the designer really pulls it off and you don’t think twice about it.
Best stuff in the world
This Web 2.0 site does fall pray to the overly common “Web 2.0″ design elements. It has soft gradients, trebuchet MS fonts, and it evens says “beta.”
But they do something very unique with a relatively new idea. Plenty of people are using tags as a method of navigation (which seems to work well, I use them). This site figured if tags work with text, they can also work with images.
It does make the site very interesting and fun to click around, identifying pictures with what they represent. I haven’t seen it before, very creative and original!
Submit a site
At this point I am not worried about if I or anyone would use the design, or even love it, just that it follows basic design rules (Sites that are different and new simply because they ignore any sort of design all together really don’t qualify.) I would prefer CSS based sites, however some mild use of tables can be acceptable if under control and the site has a unique feel.
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