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 /. as a bullet point. I also think his article headers
using a light green makes them look a bit soft, but all in all, it's a nice
design.
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 ;) Maybe
if he echod the streaks a bit that he uses in the header. I don't know. I
really like how he handled the logo...
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.