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!) 
 

Yes, it’s true. I have officially added Oregon to my list of “daydreaming quality” destinations around the globe. And I owe it all to the beautifully designed website released by the Oregon Coast Visitors Association. They’ve really captured the natural, pristine, and virtually untouched beauty of this public land along Oregon’s coast, which, up until today, I didn’t know existed.

My favorite graphic elements include (in no particular order):

  • The creative navigation treatment using the actual map image serving as a double purpose

  • The color scheme and type treatment work wonderfully to represent these fresh, earthy ocean cities and towns while giving it a nostalgic historic feel.  It reminds me of an old 1950’s Navy ship coming back from overseas full of young sailors waiting to greet their families.

  • The page layout itself is unique.  They captivate their users by having a strikingly raw photo take up majority of the space above the fold.  There is no doubting that scenery is their bait.  They know once we’ve seen enough of these photos we’re hooked and immediately checking out Orbitz for flight fares.

  • The treatment around the photos and buttons makes me feel like I’m looking at an old treasure map.  This treatment is then layered with opacity layers and nice graphics and type to give it just the right amount of modernism.
 

Nicely done OCVA!  I will definately "Share My Story" on your site when I return from my first big adventure along The People’s Coast.

So I really think I’m cheating by writing about Rethink Design’s website.  This is simply because about 15 minutes deep into my inspection of it, I realized that it is so similar to my natural style of design that someone who really knows me well would just assume it is already a part of my portfolio.  One could argue that I should stretch a tad bit further outside of my own creative realm and spend my time critiquing something a little less “Nicole” like.  But since this is my blog, and at this dark, dreary, almost below zero moment in Chicago, I’m feeling very much inspired by this warm, fresh, and earthy homepage, I’m adding it to the blog.

Homepage.  This is the key word here.  The guts of rethinkdesign.org are slightly clunky and don’t work visually nearly as well its cover.  My favorite part of the homepage is the anchored floral background.  It’s not necessarily the image itself that caught my eye.  It’s the placement of that image being off-centered and outside of your typical screen width that’s interesting.  The light, organic silhouette of the flowers works wonderfully in contrast to the bold, boxes placed on top. 

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…

It’s more than just the name - which, if you ask me, is enough on it’s own. It’s the cunning design, witty content, and unique user experience implemented on the Chicago building’s website, www.thepeshtigo.com that really got me inspired.

Let’s start with the footer (yes, weird place to start – I know). I’m really loving the slanted neon yellow line. It was actually the first thing that drew me in to explore more. That line adds SO much to the overall feel of the site by creating some “un-perfectness” to the collection of straight-edged walls and precisely angled buildings.  Each page would definately be lacking something without it. I’ve noticed that line in other odd places that carry that little extra touch – like the loading bars, photos, and submit buttons.  It’s a very clever execution of a faint theme throughout the pages. 

I like their use of opacity and treatments to the photos throughout the site.  I’ve been noticing the opacity technique being used a lot lately as an interesting way to lay text over a photo. They also do a good job of mixing classic black and white photography with a contemporary style of font choices and neon colors.

I love how once a tab is selected, the dotted lines are drawn ramdomly (but intentionally), around the page.  Granite – it’s done in Flash – but you could create something similar in HTML. 

And last and least: What is up with their logo?  Why would they spend all of this time and money designing this brilliant website and then stick a half (excuse my French) ass logo up at the top?  Hmmm…

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!

I’ve been searching lately for a good example of clean, fresh design that really perfects the simplicity and complexity of whitespace.  Believe it or not, this is a very hard balance to achieve.  Although I wouldn’t call Healdsburg’s new tourist information site perfect, it does represent this style I’ve fallen in love with lately. I’d like to call it "modern basics".

I know, I know…"modern basics" sounds like a bedding line at K-Mart (in fact, now that I think about it - it very well might be).  But, it really encompasses that look of beautiful typography and crisp open pages.  It combines that feeling of the old school basics with some modern touches.  You have to really take a look at the entire site up close.  This small image doesn’t do it justice. 

Although today my profession is in Interactive Design, my first passion for the arts was drawing…specifically people. I would cut out photos of the most interesting characters I could find from magazines and newspapers, and spend hours drawing them. It’s easy to get caught up in the templated world of web design and forget about these natural organic shapes of the human body. One shape used to break through the boxes can add so much life to a page.  This is what instantly attracted me to Fray.

Fray uses large watercolor images and great typography to test the limits of what templates can look like. It still feels extremely organized and professional, but in ways, you almost feel like you aren’t looking at a website.  This could work as an amazing print piece as well. 

I love how the hand is protruding from the top of the screen.  It’s as if it’s really reaching down into your computer. The defined line created by using the tan on top and white on the bottom adds some structure to balance out that large image overlapping it.  Check out Fray up close here: fray.com.

Sometimes I get so sick and tired at looking at all of the over-designed, over-colored, and quite frankly,  over-whelming sites that populate the web today.  To come across this website for The American Institute of Architects was extremely refreshing.  It’s an example of the perfect mix between a "cut and paste" style and modern simplicity. I love the hard edges mixed with highlights and reflections.

I also admire how the space seems to appear so open and free of boundries…especially since it represents nothing but structures and walls!

To see for yourself what I’m talking about visit www.favoritearchitecture.org.