Am I blue?
How could you be anything but bluishorange when you’ve got such a stylish design? Alison, star of web and screen, has put together a very personal look here. I always get the feeling I’m looking at it through a filter. As if I have on a pair of sunglasses, or I’m staring through a tinted window. A tinted train window maybe? It’s subdued, and yet it’s very striking. I love the look of it. The large picture of alison on the train staring out the window, wearing an orange sweater and leaning on a little, blue, scrap of paper, which I assume is the blue in bluishorange. It’s a very candid shot. She is either quite happy at that moment, or is about to burst out laughing from having her picture taken. The two packs of gum I don’t understand, but they don’t seem out of place. And I love her tagline—“we’re gonna live like kings! damn hell ass kings!’ I can picture her in a bar, with her friends, yelling this out in the early hours of the morning.
Scanning to the bottom of the photo, just past the title, is the main nav. This is where you can find out about alison, her various projects, see a collection of her photos, or get in touch with her. this is also the point at which you notice the 2 little wings alongside the central column housing the blog. It’s a 3 column, ice layout, with sections for links on the left and right and the blog section in the center. This layout doesn’t need to be liquid. liquid would be disturbing here. it stays centered in the window and that works just fine. the left wing contains links to various other cool stops on the web, while the right wing holds the links to her archives. The titles and the background for these little wings are again, done with style. the titles being the only capitalized items on the page. all other text is lower case. the background pics are a slightly larger and darker version of the main pic and adds to the feel. If they had been simply colored backgrounds, they wouldn’t have been as effective.
Back in the blog section, the orange date headers (is that spanish?) effectively break up the entries, and the fleur graphic ties back to the the title pic, and makes it that much more her own. Alison claims every inch of her blog/site and puts her own stamp on it. The text, all lowercase, is an off-white color and the links, in a light greenish, hover in orange. 12px arial, with 18px line spacing is in use, and is very readable against the black background. I always go back and forth as to which font I prefer, arial or verdana. I usually lean towards arial, and here especially, verdana just wouldn’t have worked. it wouldn’t have provided the same feel as arial.
Her color choices for everything from the text, to the background color, and background graphic, all work together creating the overall feel. Even the title pic has a certain tint to it, intentional or not, that’s in keeping with the whole bluishorange look. Everything has a tie-in somewhere. Nothing is left swinging in the breeze. She’s even gone ahead and colored the scrollbar just enough so that it doesn’t disturb the look—and oops! I just noticed a mistake on my part. Alison’s footer graphic is flipped upside down. mine is flipped horizontally. ack! oh well, I’ll leave it. it happens.
In the end it’s this personal style and attention to detail that I like about all the sites I’ve done so far. They’re individuals and their designs reflect that.