The first thing that caught my eye was the huge bold heading “Creative Engaging Branding”, this instantly tells the reader exactly what the company specialize in.

To the right of this great looking title is a slideshow of recent work from the agency, giving anyone interested an idea of the style of work they produce and the sort of clients they have worked with. I particularly like the way the work slides in using an array of different techniques, making it interesting throughout. It would have been very easy to put the same transition on every slide but I’m glad they put a little extra effort in to make them all different.

I know the Charles Elena Design site uses a very commonly seen colour scheme of Red, White, Grey and Black but they have used it to great effect throughout the site to give the whole thing a very striking impact.

Every section in the site has a different background colour making each unique, with the supporting colours used expertly to give hierarchy to the page. The pages with the red background are my personal favourite.

I really love the use of huge graphics throughout the site, these are very much in-line with the big bold headings on every page. There are more and more sites online these days incorporating massive font and graphics and Charles Elena Design is a great example of why. As you travel down the page you are treated to some lovely shapes that really show off the agencies skills.

One point I would make though is that the speed at which the page scrolls down means that these graphics are shown too briefly in my opinion. While you can scroll to the graphics and take them in properly it wouldn’t hurt to slow down the scroll speed.

While I’m suggesting improvements that could possibly be made I’d like to highlight the very small copy font that is used on occasion. In the example above the copy font size is 10.67px which is very small for such a long paragraph of text. I would love to see this bumped up a pixel or two because it’s currently very hard to read.

One final improvement I would love to see would concern the presentation of their portfolio. They have used a scrolling carousel to display their work, which in my opinion, is difficult to use as it makes focusing on specific work very fiddly. An option to scroll through the work one by one would be my preference.

Also, their is currently no way to enlarge the work on offer. I’d love to have the chance to open their work up in a lightbox and see it in all it’s glory.

I don’t want to seem too negative here though because overall I really love this site and think it’s a great piece of work. With that in mind, I want to now go onto my favourite design feature on the site, the fixed logo and navigation. As you take a journey down the page the logo and navigation come with you staying in a fixed position on your screen.

This may not seem special but the designers of the site have thought about this journey and incorporated the logo into the background graphics. In the example above the logo merges with the curved graphic to make it look as if the curve is bleeding out. There are numerous examples of this as you go down the page and it is small touches like this that, in my opinion, makes sites stand out from the crowd.

I came across their site this week after seeing it displayed in a CSS gallery and I liked it so much I thought I would have a further look at it for you now.

The First thing that caught my eye about the site was the unusual layout. The reason for this is the huge mixed media centrepiece that houses a slideshow of upcoming acts. I really like their decision to have a large ‘billboard’ as the main attraction of the site as it quickly and clearly shows the viewer what sort of things they can see at The Albany.

The fact that this slideshow is placed slightly off centre also adds to the overall composition of the page. There has been a decision made to make this site look ‘imperfect’, which gives the whole site a softer personality. Not only are things asymmetrical, there are also wonky boxes, handwritten notes and crumpled paper, to name a few.

There is a very stark black and white colour theme running through The Albany site. However, they have used a bold yellow within this colour scheme to place emphasis on certain important areas. One excellent example of this is the box office phone number, which has not only been expertly placed at top of the page (making it one of the first things you notice) but has been entitled in yellow, which ensures it stands out and is very easy to find when you want to. It could have been very easy to overuse this yellow but luckily it is used sparingly throughout the site. Every time you add another striking element to a web design you lessen the effect of the existing calls to action.

While the designers of this site have expertly used yellow to make certain information stand out, I must admit that I feel they have used the wrong colour for their navigation. The grey they have decided to use is struggling to stand out on top of the subtle grey gradient that it sits on. While they have made the font very large the lack of any contrast means that I find myself ignoring it time and again. I would recommend that they try using black for this font and changing the hover state to the grey they have now.

One other problem I have with the navigation is the fact that there seems to be 2 placed very closely together. The aforementioned navigation is accompanied by another one directly above it. This is very confusing for a user, as there doesn’t seem to be any distinction between the types of content that fit into each section.

To summarize, The Albany site has a vibrant sense of personality, which seems to fit well with the type of performances that go on in the venue. There is a lovely use of colour and a fabulous centrepiece that highlights the upcoming performers.

I’d love to know what you think of the site, please comment your opinions and feel free to tell me if you think I’m wrong. Alternatively, if you think I’m possibly the best web design writer on this planet and everything I have said here is spot on then I’d love to hear that too.

The first thing I noticed about the site was it’s unusual layout. The content pods are arranged in a random order (although they do conform to a 4 column grid) and give the site, in my opinion, a nice feeling of fluidity. This theme continues throughout the site as the location of the pods vary on every page.

There is also a key pod on most pages that contain the copy for that page. These pods are twice the width of the others and don’t include a white border (the other pods do.) These design choices make the bigger pods stand out much more and I constantly found myself looking at these before their smaller counterparts.

One problem I do have with the pod design however, is the ‘reflection’ that has been placed beneath them. I know this is a purely personal design opinion but the layout of the site doesn’t call for having a reflection under the pods, they just don’t look like they are sat on a reflective surface. I would suggest that a subtle drop shadow would look better.

The very subtle grey colour scheme makes any use of colour really stand out. As you navigate through the site you see that each section has been given a corresponding accent colour which has been used within the pods. I really like this contrast as it puts emphasis on the important areas.

As you dig down into the site and get to the bulk of the content the layout reverts back to what you might call a conventional style. The page is split using a traditional 3 column layout with the largest of the columns housing the copy. This is an important step because the site needs to convey its message to the readers, and making the main content easy to read is obviously a must for this. If they had decided to use the random pods structure on these lower level pages it could have been very difficult to focus the users’ attention on the copy.

Anyway, I’ll stop there and summarize by saying that I really like what the guys have done with their site and think that it looks great. The guys working for CEMP are producing a lot of very interesting work and I suggest you get yourself on the site and find out exactly what they do.

Kontain is a community that allows you to follow your friends as they post videos and music, etc. Now every community’s strength is in its users, so encouraging people to sign up is a must. Kontain knows this and they’ve designed their sign up process to be as painless as possible.

The first thing I noticed about the page was the bright colours giving the whole site a very positive mood and putting the user in a positive frame of mind. The next thing is that the form is laid out horizontally rather than the normal vertical layout I would expect to see from a form. As the form all fits on one line it makes the whole thing seem even shorter because it is instantly visible, and you know exactly how much information is needed straight away.

The size of everything is also a great strength of the form. Everything is clear to see and each field is given the same amount of importance as they are the same size as each other. Once you have put in your details the ‘Sign Up!’ button is right there to press. One thing I would say is that having the ‘Terms of Use’ statement under the sign up button could mean that some people submit the form without noticing that. I would suggest placing that field above the submit button so the natural movement of the eyes down the page means you come across that before hitting submit.

However, the error messages are excellent on the form. Each message appears above the corresponding field and provides a very clear message on exactly how to fix the problem.

Go and have a look at the sign up form for yourself and let us know your thoughts.

Are there any forms that you feel make the process of filling them out a breeze? If so post a link here and let everyone else see.

The Camp Creative Group website has been built to show off the agency’s work while giving them a very professional but friendly personality – and it achieves these goals very well. The first thing I looked at on the site was the logo. It’s a beautifully colourful yet subtle logo that is placed within it’s very own tab. This tab not only gives the logo an importance within the site but it is the first element (of many) that gives the site a feeling of depth. This is created with a beautiful gradient and a very soft shadow.

The design of the site then leads your eye to the tagline “Fall in love with your design” which is placed on top of a beautiful grey that has a lovely little abstract illustration in it. The examples of work are displayed in a slideshow format, meaning that they can display more examples of their work. I really like the opaque borders surrounding the images, with the background illustration being blurred. This is a very nice little detail in my opinion.

This opaque theme is carried on as you scroll down to the content of the page, using it as a container for the text. This container once again employs a subtle drop shadow making it seem like it is on another level to the rest of the site. This content area uses a very pale grey making it stand out from the area above it. They have also used SIFR, to ensure what looks like a Future font displays for their titles. In my opinion, this choice of font fits very well with the clean and simple style of the site.

The footer follows which once again uses a very dark grey, giving the homepage a symmetry of light and dark. The site has a wonderful use of ‘white space’ throughout the site, but this is especially evident in the footer with a huge amount of space between each element within it.

To summarize, the site has an amazing feel of depth, using opaque borders and drop shadows superbly. The site is very clean and elegant with some great little touches adding the fine details that really make it stand out.

Don’t just take my opinion as gospel, what do you think? Am I talking nonsense? I’d love to hear your opinions of the site. Be sure to visit it here.

New Sugar Magazine is a PDF magazine that showcases some of the very best graphic design and illustration from around the world. The magazine allows visitors to their site to submit their own work with a chance to possibly be featured in the next issue. The magazine itself is full of high class work, which the designers of the site have decided to showcase on the site. This makes the site very colourful with lots of striking pieces of work to look at.

If I’m honest, it took me a little while to actually work out what the site was for. From a usability point of view it could be argued that the call for submissions is the most striking aspect of the site and that it may be a good idea to give the user an idea of what they would be submitting to first.

Anyway, once I had worked out exactly what I was looking at I made sure I spent some time really taking in the beauties on offer. The background pattern is one aspect that really caught my eye. It’s very subtle and uses very simplistic illustration but it fits nicely with the personality of the site.

I also really like the bold typeface they have chosen for their titles. It really stands out and draws attention very effectively. They have also chosen a high contrast colour for these titles adding to their striking appeal.

The site is split into a series of content pods, with each being given a bold cream border. In my opinion, this gives the site a slightly retro feel and for some reason makes me think of the Carsonified site.

There is a great deal of imagery used throughout the site, which is what you would expect from a site about a design magazine. This adds lots of points of interest on the pages as images tend to be the things a user will scan first.

To summarize, the site is full of interesting illustration, bold colours and is very pleasing on the eye. What do you think of it? Do you agree with me or do you have any suggestions for how you would improve it? I’d love to read your opinions.

Go visit the site now and make up your own mind.

The new design is certainly cleaner but in my opinion lacks any interest. The first thing that I noticed was the black section in the header. This area cuts through both the logo and the navigation and my first opinion of it was that it was a mistake.

The same sort of issue is visible at the bottom of the page where the strip of ‘stars’ don’t fit plush to the bottom of the browser and again looks like a mistake to me rather than a design decision. I’m not in any way saying that these are mistakes; I’m just explaining that these were my initial opinions at first sight.

There are some very interesting techniques used in the new design though. The first is the title display, where it overlaps with the article image. I think this looks interesting and is a very simple technique but one that I had never thought of myself.

Secondly, there is interesting use of the ‘text-shadow’ CSS rule in the comments title. They have used a light shadow effect to give the impression of a letterpress, which works very well (this only displays in browsers that support the ‘text-shadow’ rule.)

So on the whole, while the Abduzeedo redesign is no tragedy, I personally think it’s a very underwhelming ‘improvement.’

Still my opinion only counts for one, so I’d be really interested to find out what you think of it. Are you a fan? If you haven’t seen it yet be sure to go and have a look at it and make up your own mind