Designables Web Site Uploaded

FINALLY! This week was spent finalizing a design I could live with. The site was designed & spliced in Photoshop, coded in Dreamweaver. Uploaded to directly to GoDaddy from Dreamweaver. It was my first time publishing from Dreamweaver. What a breeze! I want to give credit to the six revisions tutorial that inspired me.

Custom Twitter Background for designables

I resized my logo and created this twitter background in photoshop. Now I am starting to see that this complexity of gradient makes this logo ineffecient for manipulating for different uses. I manage to size down w/o losing much quality of gradient but the text doesn't show.  I tried down sizing the "design" part and add "ables" text in the right proportions. But no more. I am still waiting for inspiration for the right visual concept for designables....meh. anyways, I do like the slight black gradient. check out my twitter @designables

designables simple one page site design

 

I chose a simple one page layout for my initial website. I duplicate the gradient border used on the logo foe containers to feature content. I wanted a simple design that won't clash with the projects displayed in the "featured" box. I haven't much content to spread over a few pages. Until I build up a portfolio I will simply feature some projects on the page and provide a space for contact with a simple form at the bottom instead of a separate page. Later I can add navigation bar and pages for portfolio, services, etc.

cut-out & shadow for stencil text effect

I  was very pleased with the prism effect on the circular geometric Digitica font. It is reminiscent of my SHAPE concept. It suggests a grid and a color wheel the basic tools for designer. Digitica even sounds like digidesign one the unavailable domain names I thought of. Now I needed to give the 2 dimensional prototype some dimension. In keeping with the tools of creativity, I thought I use a cut-out technique I'd seen on screencasters.heathenx.org to create look of a stencil. I followed the same steps pretty much except my black cutout gives the look of a prism light casting a shadow behind a grid.

Now the simplicity of the san serif 'Raleway' font looks quite appropriate to addition for the slogan that wont compete or conflict with the dominant Digitica text. So far so good.

designables logo inspired by Digitica font and color wheel

As much as I am attracted to the thin san serif "Raleway" font I just found at The League of Moveable Type its just to light for an eye catching logo. I have to realize although I am empressed by its sophiticated svelte prportions and cool 'w' my potential customers won't be impressed. They will see plain. So I decided to do a search for free fat san serif fonts. Joila! I find Digitica! Perfect for a geometric theme. I was thinking using graph motif as part of a geometrical theme that suggest designing. This font suggest both gragh as well as geometrical shapes. Its also way fat enough to xall kinds of text effects. Actualy th entymolgy of this made up word the fonts more like workiking with shapes -- reminecent  the business graphics of geometric shapes for my old busines SHAPE. In fact, I was inspired to use primary colors again on either a white or black background.  I got some criticism for I kept the "design" distingueshed, but my argued that the eintire word is unrecognizeable and too lng without the "design" being highlighted. In addition, using the entire word designables in Digitica font is too hard to read and too long. My first thought was to make each letter a different primary color. But as I looked at the color wheel of the Inscape I thought about creating a prism effect with the gradient tool. This is what I came up with. It could easily be swithed to white background with "ables" in black. Okay, I am really satisfied so far.

Lacking concept for Logo design

As I was playing around with the idea of a drop shadow I stumbled upon the idea of creating a header design made up of a pattern of repeating text behind the text logo. I wanted to show the etymology of this made up word by distinguishing the root word "design"  from "-ables" suffix. At this point I have no slogan still. Looks like part of a Macy's news paper ad. I want it to reflect my style: simple, elegant &  geometric. This is TOO SIMPLE. Not to mention confusing. I think I am going to be my own worst customer. Impossible to come up with a good design with no concept.