Website Design Blog. Evoart

So there I was on Friday afternoon working away when all the designers received an email from one of the Senior Designers to let us know that he’d just launched a new iteration of his portfolio site — Joystik. At that moment a great idea sprang into my head. Why not create a post on Evoart each month about a fantastic looking website? And so ‘Design in the Spotlight’ was born, and your reading the intro to the first one!

In this post we’ll look at Joystik’s layout, the colours used in the design, the typography (which has to be one of my favourite elements that make up a website right now) and then sum the design up in general. As this is the first post of its kind here on evoart I’d love to hear your thoughts about Joystik’s design and also the elements that you think I should cover in next months ‘Design in the Spotlight’ review.

Joystik’s Layout

This sites layout is clear and focused with the structure being predominantly a two column layout. When you land on the home page its immediately obvious how to navigate through the site and that its an online portfolio. The big featured project on the right kind of gives that away! The footer area at the bottom of the site (obviously) features three columns including links to Delicious, Flickr, YouTube, Paul’s latest news items and links to interesting sites across the web.

I think the sites structure works well as mixed column layouts still seem to be very popular. The main reason for this I believe is that they help keep things visually interesting for the sites users. As long as the sites structure can be followed easily and is consistent (ie doesn’t hinder usability) then I think mixed column layouts are great! Plus, no one can argue the sudden rise to fame of the more functional footer that actually serves a purpose rather than simply housing unwanted links and opyright statements.

The Colour Palette

Quite an unusual combination, but definitely a palette that works as all the colours are very complimentary of one another. The dark blue background really compliments the green and white titles especially, but is also extremely kind to the light blue used in the navigation. I think the colours are quite unusual and I can’t off the top of my head recall a site that uses the same set. To be honest I think If I were to re design evoart I might use something similar to this colour palette!

Typography

In my opinion the typography makes this site along with the utter simplicity of it. First the logo type is great, and was the first thing that really stood out to me when I landed on the page. Im a sucker for fonts, and this is no exception. I can’t quite decide whether its been edited or manipulated in any way in Photoshop but it looks great, very unique and quite futuristic.

The next distinguishing feature of this site are the titles — for example on the home page ‘I design websites with focus on god design, user experience and accessibility”. These are used to great effect and help lead us into the rest of that particular pages content. They act if you like as a little teaser for the rest of the content that follows on each page. Without these I don’t think the site would have the immediate impact that it has and also the personal feel that it exudes. As I mentioned above the choice of colour really helps the titles leap out from the background and encourages you to read them and navigate through the site.

The next element that got my attention were the small headings (probably around 10 or 11 pixels in size) that sit inside the featured design area on the homepage, right at the bottom. Again its nothing overly complicated or fancy, its just a simple font used very effectively on the web.

Final thoughts…

I don’t think anyone can deny that this is clearly a well designed website. Afterall its been featured in CSS Remix, Light on Dark, CSS Mania and many more design galleries. What do you think of the design? Anything you don’t like, or would have done differently?