What is it with me and watercolor styled websites?  Agami Creative is yet another self-reminder that I just can’t get enough of them.  Maybe it’s because it fulfills my craving for just the right amount of texture online.  Or maybe it’s because the combination of the natural paint strokes and website grids appears so fluid but stays within the constraints of a template.  Or maybe it’s simply because I’m down right envious of anyone who got blessed with the painting skills that I lack.  Whatever the reason may be – I’m really digging this painted online portfolio. 

First things first.  I love the homepage!  I love the color combo.  I love how they mixed rough edges with hard ones.  I love the button treatment (though I wish they had a rollover state).  I love the font choices.  And I love the VERY simple divider between the two rows of content underneath the main banner.  It’s very discrete, but very appreciated!  But we all know the homepage isn’t everything, so here are my comments after taking a look at the inside pages - I promise I won’t say the word “love” anymore.

I’ll start with the header – since it’s the first thing that caught my eye.  My favorite thing about the header is the big brown paint stroke containing each section title.  Some may argue that it’s too big and too dark…but I think it works wonderfully as a base for the organic painting above and as an anchor to the mainly text section below.  I like how they included a quote pertaining to each individual section to give you a better feel for what they’re all about without having to read deep into the main content.  One thing I wish they would’ve put more thought into though is the navigation on top.  I feel like those brown rollover highlights contrast too much with the rest of the page’s feel.  A simple tweak they could do to take away some of the harshness from those boxes would be to make them slightly transparent.  Which leads me to my next component…

…the transparent bar that contains the right rail content.  This slight bar adds some crisp lines in an interesting way and is a nice divider of content.  I also like how it is connected to the header and footer on every page. 

One thing that really bothers me is the black section of the footer at the very bottom of the page.  It doesn’t really match with anything they’ve got going on above.  I wish they’d leave that to be the light tan canvas from the main page above. 

Overall, I think Agami Creative did a very nice job at designing a unique layout that really screams what they’re all about (in a soft beautiful way of course!) 
 

So now that I’ve officially made the switch over to retail (from the oh-so-exciting world of mortgages), I now have an entirely new realm of websites to pay attention to. It’s been quite refreshing so far - especially since there are companies like Target around.

For as long as I can remember Target’s design has always impressed me. They are one of the few retail companies that truly "get" branding. Everything from print, to web, to in-store, to television just radiates "Target". They have achieved what all companies aim to achieve by having a logo fully recognizable alone without any name next to it. Needless to say, I have come to expect good design from them and am no longer surprized by it…

…until I discovered Club Wedd. Club Wedd is Target’s version of a wedding registry site, which they have incorporated right within their main template. The colors, painted illustration style, copy, and functionality all work together brilliantly to create a unique memorable user experience.

I especially love the center (or technically home) page. Registering for a wedding can be an overwhelming task and they have broken it down visually by allowing the user to click on various rooms of the house and ultimately create their list in a more organized fashion. Each category page after that is able to take on the style guide of the regular Target site, while still maintaining the crafty look and feel of Club Wedd by carrying individual category banners.

Club Wedd reminds me that you can still, in some instances, be completely and utterly creative while living within a major retailer’s website. It also shows me what a good balance of water color illustration (which I’ve been so drawn to lately), and web 2.0 style looks like. I guess opposites do attract…sigh…

10 Volt Media’s non-traditional website structure really gets me thinking about different ways to push the boundaries on what a homepage should look like.  Even though showing the Chicago skyline, if you ask me - is pretty overdone, they do it as an illustration so it gives their company a bit more personality than the next guy. 

Most of their work displayed inside is on the serious side, so the fact that their website is tad playful shows prospective clients they can design in a variety of styles. I also like how they carry the bushes along the bottom of every page.  This is a cool technique that doesn’t take away from the information on the pages themselves.  Check out their site at www.10voltmedia.com.

Do you believe in love at first site? After stumbling upon Firebelly Design - I do. The creativity in their work is rare and undefined and surprisingly, those two words can also be used to describe their office culture and agency website.

The team is unbelievably talented, socially responsible, and in “it” for the right reasons.  Their Work section is stocked full of great design techniques and unique solutions to both print and web projects.  This discovery gave me a second wind to make it through the work week.  Hopefully it will give you yours as well!