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Friday Focus 10/23/09: Enjoy the View

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This week on Friday Focus: websites that will make you want to get in the car or on a plane and head to these exquisite destinations. At least we can enjoy their views from within our own browsers!

Designs of the Week

Hills and Dales Estate

I really like are the way the popup menus are designed. Even better is the way the background images load first, and then the content area fades into view.

Abribois

Great lighting in the header, and the way the color of the wood background makes the photos pop.

Kosciuszko Alpine Guided Walks

You don’t have to pepper your site with concrete representations of what your site is all about, and this is a good example of that. Makes for an elegant yet still outdoorsy look.

Utah.travel

I’m not sure exactly why you’d use a strap in such a prominent place such a header but it certainly looks different. Love the interactivity of the menus on the left. Another brilliant feature: the execution of the map menu on the right side.

Ride Oregon

Huge photos. Excellent typography. I’m just not sure about the wallpaper background.

National September 11 Memorial & Museum

Clean and modern. The labels on the photo itself are a great and necessary touch.

Jefferson County, Tennessee

This design reminds me of Obama’s online branding, and it looks so elegant. This isn’t even a travel destination site, but it definitely makes you want to go there.

Walden's Ridge

I like the textured background in the logo, and the way the photos fade at the edges.

Social Media Weekly

Design – 404 Error Page – Don’t Get the Page Itself to Be Even a Bigger Error

Programming – HTML, CSS, and Web Development Practices: Past, Present, and Future

Friday Focus 05/22/09: Headshots

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Don’t laugh! Don’t think it’s anything morbid, either! Let’s see how this week’s websites have made use of people’s heads as part of their designs.

Designs of the Week

Jedal Italian Fashion

This site feels a little heavy because everywhere you look there’s something, but it does help that the headshots in the background are in neutral hues, not bold, high-contrast ones. It makes the colors on the shoe products pop, too. I like that the featured products slideshow use big photos, is placed front and center, and contains ample whitespace.

Seth Said

Now for something cleaner and simpler. Good use of bold colors and whitespace. And you can’t go wrong with Seth Godin’s head!

Gavin Castleton

A one-page site with transparency, grunge, big backgrounds, and horizontal scrolling—what’s not to like? The split-screen effect, with varying fonts even, provides maximum impact and a great way to divide the two main sections of the site.

Social Media Weekly

Fonts, CSS – 10 great free fonts for @font-face embedding

HTML, Accessibility – Imporance of HTML headings for accessibility

Friday Focus 10/03/08: Giant Imagery

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Giant imagery is this week’s theme on Friday Focus. Happy October everyone!

Designs of the Week

Volunteer Lawn, Inc.

I like the boxy/modular look of this site. I especially like that the huge background image shows what the company is all about, which is landscaping Knoxville and surrounding areas.

Back of the Napkin

Again, the look of the site strongly reinforces its subject with the napkin and the handwritten effect. But this time, the layout is non-linear. Minus points for using Comic Sans MS in the testimonials section though!

Kendal Mountain Festival

You don’t have to make your background image appear throughout the length of your site. For the more meaty content, this page uses a solid background color. Then you end up at the footer with jagged borders evocative of the mountain slopes.

Madame Surtô

Great mix of all things floral, textured, and hand-drawn. But the design detail I like the most is the sewn patch look.

Social Media Weekly

Design – Forget the Wireframes, Throw Away Your Boxy Layouts — Design BIG!
The title speaks for itself. A guide to thinking out of the box and designing BIG!

Programming – CSS Systems for writing maintainable CSS
A presentation by Natalie Downe about “CSS Systems”, a “top-down approach to architecting a site’s CSS”.

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