This is another old note to myself…
This is a loaded area to explore. I enjoy so many different visual styles that it’s really hard to settle down to one particular style. Doing some sort of mash up would be an exercise that I should try. Let me see if I can get out some of my likes so I can better articulate what I’d like to accomplish visually.
- Web 2.0 look—nice smooth gradients. At times they appear candy-like.
- Minimal grunge—clean lines with only hints of grunge.
- Typographic beauty. sIFR is what I want to use, if it’ll work for me and I can understand it correctly.
- Minimal and colorful. Energetic colors and a minimal use of visual elements. This probably is something that falls into the Web 2.0 look. But I really like a smart use of color.
- Patterns. patterning of some sort to help bring interest into the dead parts of the page and highlight the content.
- Flexible. I want to make the layout work with small screens and monster cinema displays.
- Pixel art. Yummy raster goodness can’t be beat.
- Icons. There’s some killer icon design going on right now. I want to make some of my own.
That’s most of what I like. It’s a pretty inclusive list that spans all sorts of aesthetic tastes. My challenge is to reconcile them into something that is uniquely me. Something that I can tweak and modify over a much longer period of time.
One of the hardest things is to design for yourself. (Future post…) I’ve been trying off and on for the past 2 years or so to come up with something that I like. Actually have gotten close a couple of times to launching something new, only to scrap it for one reason or another. When I get time, I’ll post a couple of ditched designs.