Clean Slate
I guess you could say this was somewhat inspired by Doug’s recent “Bleached” site. I actually had something like this in mind before he did that.
I was getting tired of staring at light blue and red. I have some ideas for a what I want to do next, but I am not sure when I will have the time to work on them. They mostly have to do with reorganizing the content, especially on the homepage.
For the most part, this site has grown from one page with a sidebar to 5 pages, and I usually just tagged on whatever I needed to the style and markup, so they were both somewhat of a mess. The redesign will also be about cleaning those up. It took way to much work to get the site to the point it is now. It should have been easier.
August 30th, 2004
Honestly? I like it even more than previous design. Seems to me that I do fancy clean sites, with white backgrounds (examples: Airbag, Make Ready and a number of other as well. I discard dropshadow, fancy multi column layouts and faux columns. Plain, simple, easy-looking: that’s what is about to come in. IMO, at least. :-)
August 30th, 2004
When is it ever easy?! The site works really well now. Could end up missing some of the previous elements, but this is a really positive change in my opinion. The legibility and clarity has gone through the roof.
Good job, Jeremy…
August 30th, 2004
I love these open sites. I think the best way to create a site is to start with a semi-blank canvas and then build as you are inspired to.
One thing bothers me though. Because your content is not lined up with the navigation and header, it looks like the page leans.
August 30th, 2004
I gotta say - I liked the old colors better.
This minimalistic thing is cool, but it seems like anybody can do it. I’m not a good designer (by any means), but it doesn’t feel like this is difficult at all. Certainly there are other elements to a design besides the main color you use on a page, but to me, the use of color and images are largely what differentiate sites.
Gray and white? It’s clean, but really, I think it’s too easy. If you can do a colored site well, to me, that’s tough. It’s also fun. If every site were Whitespace, or even StopDesign’s new “Bleached”, why not just use a news aggregator?
If you are going to stick with this, at least do what Doug is doing and include a style switcher so I can have my color back. =)
Keep up the good work, though. It’s a fun place to visit.
August 30th, 2004
Nathan, the following I heard yesterday from an architect and interior designer: the beauty in simplicty is most difficult to achieve. If you can come up with something simple that is also appealing, you can possibly do anything. Hence, do not understimate the beauty that is hidden in simple designs. Links I provided before are best examples.