First of all, I’d like to give a big thank you to all of you who’ve been speaking up on the two redesign concepts I’ve posted. Your comments are appreciated, and – as you’ll hopefully will see – duly noted. I don’t always agree, but then again you won’t agree amongst yourselves either, so that’s fine. What would design be without a bit of controversy, eh?
That being said, the third redesign concept is here, with two different W logo solutions, and a brief explanation regarding the slanting design that you apparently either like or dislike.
So let’s start there. The whole idea with the slanting block behind the W logo, which I incidentally would like to preserve, is to reuse the form throughout the design. I don’t like to overuse forms, but this one resurfaces in submit buttons, read more links, and so on – both of those are in the concept, as you’ve probably seen. This brings life, not only sticking to the expected rectangles (or rounded corners, not many of those here, and that’s not just because I think they’re overused in design today).
In short, the slanted elements bring character to the design, because they are irregular. That’s more needed since the color scheme is almost non-existant.
Speaking of which, I do intend to use colors for hovering links, and, as been pointed out in the comments, strong images for headlining posts will certainly stand out in a design like this. I’ve made the content area a little wider than I perhaps would have under other circumstances, to give more playroom for images. I don’t think the white, grey, and black scheme will be dull, because images will lighten it up. And ads of course, although I won’t rely on them to add color.
The concepts
Enough talk! I’ve got two concepts with different logos below. They are not final, but I’m starting to feel comfortable with them, which is important since I’ll be sticking with the new design for quite some time. It’s the front page we’re looking at, no images in the mockups, you’ll have to imagine those. A simple footer have been added. Naturally, there should be more posts in the listing, I’d say five instead of the three, but I didn’t want to make the images too big.
First concept, with slanting logo design.
Second concept, no slanting logo, just a simple rectangle plate falling down from the top.
As you can see, no circular version. It just doesn’t fit into this design as it does in the current one.
What do you think?
Originally posted on January 26, 2008 @ 2:23 am