Feature
Post

Category
Friday Focus

Published Friday March 7, 2008 at 2:31 pm
By David Peralty

Friday Focus 03/07/08

It is time for another Friday Focus. Sorry that I am a bit late today, but I have been busy doing some blogging and development work elsewhere that has been keeping me super busy.

I have some great picks for both design and articles I found on Digg. I hope you enjoy this week’s installment of the Friday Focus.

Designs of the Week

This week I am going to try to hand out some criticisms as well as my normal “wow, look at this” banter. All of these designs are great, but there is something a little off about them, at least in my mind.

Good Barry
Simple, effective and easy to navigate. If I had one criticism for this site, it would be that the front page presents me with too many navigational items, thus confusing where I should go next. I love that there is a humorous flair to the site, and the sliding panels on the front page to show more content without taking up more space.

Chyrp
Simple, with a wide range of colours distinguishing different areas of the site. I love the front page, but the rest of the site falls a little flat. I hope they go back and look at their very nice front page and integrate the rest of the site better.

Brightbox
A very dark design with a decent amount of contrast on the elements that matter. Simple looking design and navigation. Definitely not your typical hosting design. The big issue I had with this site is that the logo area feels almost too big. Like they dedicated all that screen real estate to the logo and title of the company and after that, things feel a little squished in by comparison.

Digg Weekly

Design – Seriously Cool Photoshop Explosion Effect
I really enjoy PSDTuts as there are some easy to replicate but beautiful things you can do with Photoshop, even if you are a wannabe designer like myself. This effect covers creating an explosion, and while I probably wouldn’t use it as they did, I could see ways in which I could use the effect, and that’s what makes it great.

Programming – Powerful CSS-Techniques For Effective Coding
I love resource posts, and Smashing Magazine is definitely good at those. The latest one covers a variety of great links that will help you do some stunning things with CSS.

Did you like this post? Then please consider subscribing!

Share and Love

Submit post to: Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg, Del.icio.us or Blogosphere News

Random Posts

  1. By Shani Elharrar posted on March 7, 2008 at 3:03 pm
    Want an avatar? Get a gravatar! • You can link to this comment

    Thanks and Shabat shalom :)

  2. By Zhuoshi posted on March 11, 2008 at 2:50 pm
    Want an avatar? Get a gravatar! • You can link to this comment

    I disagree with you on the brightbox design. I think it’s just the right size and any smaller would not bring enough emphasis to it, but the reflection seems unnecessary.

  3. By davidcubed posted on March 13, 2008 at 3:52 pm
    Want an avatar? Get a gravatar! • You can link to this comment

    Zhuoshi – I understand where you are coming from, but I think the logo itself was enough of an attention getter. The key is the content and converting visitors to paying customers. I feel like the logo is oversized and thus creates a barrier between the user and finding out what they are looking at without scrolling down.

  4. Trackback