2006 / December 23^rd/ Organix: Finishing off the homepage

Here’s a quick check in on my redesign progress. I think I’ve gotten to a good point now with the home page.

Some of my first thoughts on my initial comp:

• I think I really ended up liking Syntax more than Interstate, so out with the Interstate and in with the Syntax.
• I decided to keep my current logo (positioning & Frutiger typeface). I also made it dark to help it stand out more.
• Black, white and red all over will be the color palette of this design. I’m going to let the body content do the color talking, as you’ll see later on down.

First pass

This was definitely getting somewhere, but I just needed some more umph. A quick mistake turned out to be something I really liked. I was looking for a way to make the tags stand out a bit more, and came out with this lovely red. It may be distracting, but I think I like it in the end. Hopefully it’ll stay.

Second Pass

Also note how much the featured story image has an impact on the design (intended):

1. 

   Andy

   December 23^rd | #

   How did you plan on doing the whole transparency bit on the featured story again?

2. 

   puNk!d

   December 23^rd | #

   I love the idea of putting the features onto the header and nav bar.

   & IMHO,the main font color is a little bit of grey,

3. 

   Lowell

   December 23^rd | #

   Andy, I assume Kyle will be implementing the transparency on the featured story text blurb with a little css3. Maybe ‘background-color: black; opacity: .5;’

4. 

   Kyle

   December 23^rd | #

   Or, a transparent PNG. Supported back to IE 5.5. Easy as pie.

5. 

   Derick Ng

   December 23^rd | #

   You’re genius! I like the red with tags and especially the idea of the featured post having a different background. Pretty pretty.

6. 

   Ranjani

   December 24^th | #

   Very nice! The background images and the red tags look especially spiffy. I can’t wait to see the real thing :D

7. 

   Max

   December 24^th | #

   I’m impressed with the way things are turning out! I can’t wait to see the final product in usable form.

8. 

   Arun

   December 24^th | #

   Kyle,

   I’ve been a regular Warpspire reader for quite a while now, and I must say, your redesign looks to be quite awesome.

   As someone who creates sites based on WordPress for a living, I’m just curious as to how you plan to implement the horizontal list of recent articles below the main featured story (Dec 3rd / Sewing confusion with absurdity… etc.).

   I mean, if your post titles are longer/shorter than the ‘required’ length, then is there a way to not make them overlap to the next line?

   I’m really looking forward to your reply on this — I’ll be watching this space :)

   Again, great redesign, and all the best with the implementation!

9. 

   Kyle

   December 25^th | #

   Arun: You’ll see… :)

10. 

    Mark Otto

    December 25^th | #

    I’d imagine an overflow: hidden; would be used, Arun, or something of the like.

    Great work Kyle, way to get your hands dirty with some new, bold stuff.

11. 

    Dan

    December 26^th | #

    Looking fantastic kyle… I like the mix between layout-genres…

12. 

    Alex Payne

    December 26^th | #

    Daring Fireball called. He wants his star back ;)

    Seriously, though, looking good.

13. 

    Kyle

    December 26^th | #

    I didn’t realize John Gruber had copyrighted Unicode…

14. 

    James

    December 30^th | #

    I just redesigned my site and this wants to make me redesign it again! Awesome work man. Looks fantastic.

15. 

    Arun

    December 30^th | #

    Kyle,

    I think I’ve figured out how you’re going to do it? $shorttitle = smarttrim()?

16. 

    Arun

    December 30^th | #

    Oh damn, it replaced the underscores. But you get what I’m saying :) Am I right?

17. 

    Ben-Inside

    February 26^th | #

    That looks very interesting. Hope to see the final in the next time.

18. 

    Floroskop

    March 19^th | #

    Hello!
    I think this try.

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