Websites I Like

digitalmash

The first site I stumbled upon was called digitalmash, the website of an Australian graphic designer who works for Facebook. His site is pretty simple in design, but I think that's why I like it. His website's name and main navigation bar are simplistic, which makes his blog links stand out tremendously. Instead of his links being in a list form, they are all in one paragraph is no form of separation except for the color of the link. The adjoining colors are all diverse enough to clearly establish them as different links. My favorite part about this website, however, is that when you scroll over one of the links, all the other links become gray except the one you intend to click on. Once a link has been clicked on, that blog entry appears below and the site scrolls down to the beginning of the article. You can easily scroll back up to look at another entry, but your focus is on the blog entry you just clicked on. Even though his homepage is really his "journal" (or blog), you can always click on one of his other links in the main navigation bar. These pages (work, photos, and about) are set up in the same manner as the journal.
Not only do I like the design of this site, but I also found I really liked the content. His blog posts range from tricks for photoshop and other design programs, tips for website design and warning not to steal his. This is definitely a creative guy and I will most certainly use this site as a resource for this course. Without directly stealing anything, of course.

flavors.me

While messing around on digitalmash, I discovered another website with a great design concept. Later I figured out that this site was actually a personal page created from a template from the website flavors.me, but I still really like the design concept. The homepage is a huge graphic, which is something I definitely want to do with my website. However, once a page is chosen from the navigation bar, a black background comes from the right so that the text can be easily read over the image. I like that part of the image can still be seen behind the black box, and that the image is stagnant, while the text can scroll up and down.

Deborah Cavenaugh

The third website that inspired me was that of an artist by the name of Deborah Cavenaugh. She came up with a great solution to a problem I've been having with my site. I wanted to put a width on my website so that the objects on my site weren't on opposite ends of a computer screen. After I created a stagnant width for my site, I found that I had a lot of empty space around the edges, especially if my web browser as big as my computer screen. Being an artist, Deborah Cavenaugh doodled (what I can only assume) is her family around the boarder of the content of her website. This is a great way to give viewers a preview of her style of art, while filling up empty space.