Journal Journal: Redesign VII: Overload 24
After a few days in california, and Hemos's little birthday email bomb, I'm struggling to get my redesign entries back in order. I once again have another 20-30 designs that are probably worth sharing but given how busy I am, I'm probably not going to be able to share them all. But I'll do what I can, so I apologize if some of these entries don't get as much commentary as they might deserve.
Matt Walker's design has been transformed into CSS since we last saw it. His header is nice. His menu and slashboxes are strong. His layout decisions are sensible. I think his article footers could be better integrated into his articles- I can't tell at a glance if the 'read more' is an entity by itself, or attached to the article above it. I think his abbreviated articles could stand out a bit more. But all in all I like his entry a lot.
ukasz Topa's design has a really nice header/logo thing going on. His choice to put the search on the left is nice. I think his article layout is simple and very clean, and the 'read more' link looks great. I'd like to see a bit more emphasis on the titles of the articles. I'm not sure I care for the tabs inside the slashboxes & menu headers. And as I've said on many entries, we could lose the topic icons on the top of hte page and use that space for a login form, or a user menu or something. But this is another excellent design that has a real shot.
Marko Mrdjenovic's design
has been updated. It is still a great example of a clean, elegent design. I
still don't care for the
John Pennypacker's design is another one that chooses orange as a secondary color. Since we also have a lot of black-as-background here, this whole entry becomes high contrast and a bit harder to read then I Would like. I do think that his article footer looks cool (and the header). That subtle diagonal fading pattern looks great.
Jeremy deserves mad props for the completeness of his design. He's really gone out of his way to show what different things might look like. I like his article layout, as well his economical header. His expanding menu for user preferences in the header is a really great idea. I think his abbreviated articles are hard to read, and I think his choices of greens make the whole thing look a bit candy-like if thats a good way to describe it. Less earthy, more neon. I don't like that so much. But thats minor.
's design is interesting to me primarily because he chose to put all the menu stuff on the left. I think that this design is pretty good given that. I think that most of the time putting everything on one side creates overload. I really do like his header tho. The login box, the search box.... it works quite nicely.
Nuno Filipe's design
is mostly fairly typical, but I think that header design is really sharply
done. There is a bit of an issue I think with his menu up top- it looks a
bit unfinished. I don't think the pop-up tabs add much (they don't hurt either)
but on my screen I have a lot of space to the right- I'm cool with white space,
but for some reason that looks to me like something didn't get loaded
Isidro Chavez's design is only a mockup image, but I felt the article footer looked really nice. Same with how he floated the topic image on the left. I'm not exactly sure if that trick will work with all the icons that aren't properly anti-aliased. Also, the light grey behind the topic icons on the top might not work with a lot of our icons.
ben heise's entry is another mockup, but a really interesting one. Very curvy. Very cool. It's hard to judge this fairly given how incomplete it is, but it's a cool start. I think the top topic icons aren't necessary, but I think he could make this one work quite well.
Jason Porritt's entry is another clean, simple, elegent design. His abbreviated articles work nicely. His article layouts are clean. His header is smart. His menu is cool. The only thing that doesn't work as well as I think it should is that his right hand slashbox menu headers see a bit brighter to me. than the rest of the design. But this is one of the strongest entries I've seen.
Michael Jonhson's design has been updated. We last saw a mockup, and he's come a long ways. In my eyes, this design is in the absolute top tier of submissions. His left hand menu is elegent. His right hand slashboxes have a slightly small font, but whatever. His header is fantastic. I think his article headers could benefit from a little more green- I'd like to see a visual top & bottom to them. Like a green titlebar with white text, perhaps still using that cutout look still. I'd also love to see what he does with the upper right hand space. But in terms of raw "Look", I love this one. There are only a handful of other entries that I think are this strong.
Lastly I'm sharing Peter Lada's update. His design is one of the most complete and best we've seen. With each revision, his design has got a little stronger.
I have several more entriesin my inbox left to scour through, but since they are mixed in with like 1200 happy birthday emails, it might take me awhile to get them all out. The contest will hopefully be wrapping up by the middle of next week. The game is still wide open- entries will be accepted until the winner is announced, so feel free to keep trying until then.