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Friday Focus 10/30/09: Orange for Halloween

October 31, 2009 By Sophia Lucero

We have some pumpkin-colored sites this week on Friday Focus, just in time for All Hallows’ Eve. Enjoy!

Designs of the Week

The top half is all about the work, while the bottom half contains supporting information from other sections of the site.

I never tire of this blocky, 3-dimensional style. The “request a free quote” tab at the top is a nice touch.

I love the navigation buttons in the header. The dark flowery wallpaper background is a bit weird though. But overall, I like the ample use of textures here.

Clean and light with just a touch of grungy textures. Lovely.

The use of hovers to switch between different chunks of text in the portfolio carousel was confusing at first, but it’s all good.

I enjoyed this website. Modern and airy with a touch of warmth thanks to the orange and the owl. The text only needs to be a notch larger.

I really like this color scheme! Plus the whole translucent and outlined graphics.

Orange, red, and black—I don’t think there’s any stronger color combination than that! Since it looks like this is a legal site, it’s great that the designers made sure the text is easy to read.

The best part of this site is that you can actually rate each item in the portfolio. Then in the client panel at the top, they’ve got the top rated designs and some great articles for resources.

Social Media Weekly

Design – Happy Haunting: Halloween Hits On the Web of Design

Icons – 200+ Truly Useful Free Halloween Icons for Everyone

Themes – Top 10 Free Halloween WordPress Themes

Friday Focus 10/09/09: 10-in-1

October 9, 2009 By Sophia Lucero

I’m doing something different this week on Friday Focus. I found one site with ten different styles on the same content (plus one homepage). Each one tries to match the visitor’s mood for the day. It’s also a good way to showcase one’s design repertoire. The designer also employs many interesting techniques into each style, so be sure to check all of them out!

(Disclaimer: This site uses tables for its layout, which I do not condone. I just thought it’d be a waste to not feature this idea.)

Designs of the Week

This is where the fun begins. I like the grungy photo frame effect.

A circus of textures, and vintage text and illustrations. I’m loving the mood in here, except for one thing: Courier New!

Big, bold, and black and white.

I would’ve liked the contact form to be a bit more “childish” too.

I like the multiple background effect going on here—one’s fixed, the other scrolls with the content.

Odd idea for the Work section to be just boxes of numbers, but that’s minimalism for you. Could have made thumbnails appear on hover, though!

I think this is the most fun and well-designed of all. Another barrage of textures and bright colors.

Absolutely unusable! But a good idea!

And of course, how not to design a website. Wink.

Love the multiple-background scrolling effect again, and how the boxes slide into the top image.

Big, chunky fonts and cool hues, with a touch of texture.

Social Media Weekly

Usability – 15 Helpful Website Usability Facts & Guidelines
“Web site usability is the quality of a user’s interaction with a web site or, in other words, how usable a web site is to the user. Ultimately, users want to be able to easily access a web site and determine how to use it within seconds.”

Design – Interactivity in Web Design: A Beginner’s Guide
“Interactivity is a giant leap from the traditional form of web user interfaces seen earlier. Adding interactivity to a web site attracts user attention and tends to brings them to the website again. They add a good amount of visual interest and attract users to visit your site again and again. The main idea of a website is to convey a message effectively.”

Webmastering – 101 Five-Minute Fixes to Incrementally Improve Your Web Site
“A webmaster’s work is never done. What may have worked a few years ago when could be outdated today, so it’s important to constantly improve your Web site. However, a massive overhaul is just too much work to undertake at one time. Instead, tackle these quick fixes over time, and you’ll be able to improve your Web site with minimal pain.”

Friday Focus 06/26/09: Interactive Backgrounds

June 26, 2009 By Sophia Lucero

Backgrounds are so called for a reason. They’re meant to support and complement instead of attract and distract. This week’s featured sites, however, provide a whole other level of interactivity and usefulness to backgrounds. You decide if they’re a good idea or not. Either way, they’re interesting concepts that can only be executed on the Web, so, enjoy!

Designs of the Week

Information visualization

Showing clients/web resources/cities on a world map as a background is brilliant. I don’t think it’s been done this way before. If the movement gets too annoying, you can stop it with a click. The “worldwide” concept carries over to the Time Zones section, which shows both the current time in your area and theirs, as well as how long before their office closes—what a sensitive little idea!

Lots of Twitter-related sites that pull tweets on a certain topic are mostly text-based and don’t usually create a wall of avatars with random popup tweets in the background. When new tweets arrive, the avatars shift right as new ones appear. And as for the foreground? Good typography, contrast, colors, and use of icon. Another well-done one-page site.

Parallax effect

Flash-based, but definitely well done.

Bright, fun illustration-based design. Fluid width too.

I like that the parallax effect works whenever your mouse moves. The background is light and subtle enough to not be distracting.

Navigation

The foreground and background fuse on the homepage, but when since the inner sections are loaded in a lightbox, you can still click on what is now the background. Anyway, very cute design elements, including the tilt-shift effect for the photographic background. And don’t you love the paper boat on the river? The greatness is in the details!

I love what the copy says, which at the same time serves as the navigation to the inner sections of the site. And the background is literally made up of the designer’s portfolio. And it looks good!

This effect might give some people a headache. But I like that the objects in the background can be any size or type—image, video, Flash animation, screenshot, poster, etc.

This one’s got more design elements for a polaroid photo collection metaphor, shadows and all. Not pictured: the designer’s latest tweet and an anti-IE6 disclaimer. One more thing about this effect: it works regardless of browser width.

Social Media Weekly

Applications, Workflow – One Day in the Life of a Web Designer
Great twofold guide for discovering helpful apps and formulating an effective routine for professional designers.

Design – 27 Must-Have Starter Kits For Web Designers
You don’t always have to start from scratch; you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Programming – How to properly “speak” HTM language
A nice little tutorial on HTML semantics.

Friday Focus 11/28/08: Huge Backgrounds

November 28, 2008 By Sophia Lucero

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Hope you aren’t too stuffed yet, ’cause we have huge backgrounds on this week’s Friday Focus.

Designs of the Week

One of the questions that will be asked when dealing with large backgrounds is “how much is too much”? The main content here seems to drown into the illustrations and you have to wonder if this was done on purpose. A lot of other things throw your eyes all over the place. The designer certainly took risks in this instance, and you’ll probably either love it or hate it.

Now for a more realistic look. My only gripe here is that the foreground is almost disconnected from the background, the complete opposite of the previous website. Almost—the designer still made transparent borders to ease the transition.

This looks like the best execution so far, but now the design is abstract. Dark, but still striking. The fades and glows reinforce the mysterious, gothic look.

And back to another illustrated look. I’d say this one’s another “just right”. It’s okay for the text boxes to look like they’re floating especially since the background is an aerial view of a community. Makes sense. Rounded corners and outlines add to the relaxed, fun feel.

Social Media Weekly

Programming – 15 Must-Have Bookmarklets For Web Designers And Developers

Programming – Essential free apps for your web design toolkit

Friday Focus 11/14/08: Navigation Techniques

November 14, 2008 By Sophia Lucero

Our featured sites this week all have fresh and brilliant navigation techniques you’ll surely envy. Be sure to click on the links to see them in action. Ready to be inspired with this week’s Friday Focus?

Designs of the Week

You might not notice how disciplined it looks at first glance, so look more closely at how everything revolves around the grid. No fancy graphics here, because it’s the variation of lines (light, dark, solid, broken, handwritten) that bring personality and texture to the site.

The best designs tell great stories. This site comes to life as though its speaking to you and telling a story. It takes your hand and brings you to different places, and you’ll certainly come back for more.

To tell a good story, “show, don’t tell”. Now apply that concept a website with the help of illustrations or in this case, photographs. I love you can still see them as the text sections expand below, acting as header and background to the whole design.

Social Media Weekly

Design – Design Top 10 – The monthly pick of online design
This site also has excellent navigation, but more importantly, it’s another great resource to keep your eyes on every month.

Design – 7 Usability Mistakes Usability Experts Commit
In commemoration of world usability day (November 13), try to follow the tips from this article to improve the overall experience websites provide.

« Previous Page

Friday Focus 10/30/09: Orange for Halloween

Designs of the Week

Social Media Weekly

Friday Focus 10/09/09: 10-in-1

Designs of the Week

Social Media Weekly

Friday Focus 11/28/08: Huge Backgrounds

Designs of the Week

Social Media Weekly

Friday Focus 11/14/08: Navigation Techniques

Designs of the Week

Social Media Weekly

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