jordanmooreblog web design awards #1

Screw the "n websites to shake a stick at" style lists, I'm holding an awards ceremony for websites that I like a lot better than others. Then some reasons why.

Squared Eye

 

• Great choice of font, especially the italic Lucida Sans - pushing boundaries because it's a rarely used font on the web and who knew it would look that good in italics
• The product (their work in this case) takes center stage - as it should for someone offering a product
• It's just different, okay? None of the "Hello! We are a company from Bleh, we make pretty/good/neat websites" they also don't feel the need to tell you what their last tweet was.

Black Estate

• One of the most readable sites I have ever seen, these guys show everybody how to use BIG type well.
• The product takes center stage
• The site "feels" like part of the brand

Leihu

• A LOT of thought has went into the layout and the quirkiness of James Mathias' homepage, rollover on his photo in the right, he smiles - awesome
• His work IS the design - the octopus on the left, good illustration, he's an illustrator, ah his product is presented on the homepage, pattern?
• Attention to typography is good, look at the ampersands in the right column (which have been harshly shaven off my screenshot due to width restrictions here) 

That does it for now, I'll maybe do a #2 soon (tee-hee) but I'll wait until I find a few more gems, preferably ones you haven't seen a million times before. It seems like I'm ranting a bit today, I'm sorry, I'll be in a better mood tomorrow. I'm safer when I keep my posts to one or two sentences.

FOWD Belfast 2009

Had a fun day at Future of Web Design amongst the quiet audience in the Odyssey's W5. We were treated to live edits from Andy Clarke at StuffandNonsense.co.uk and Drew McLellan from Edgeofmyseat.com.

I was blown away by the thinking of Morgan McKeagney and his talk on the meeting of creative and logical minds, his delivery alone had me on board from slide 1. The Standardistas also impressed with a talk about good copy, I'm biased of course - I had the privilege of being taught by Chris and Nik. The age old IE6 debate raised it's head again, we'll be talking about it for another half a decade or so. Not looking forward to that.

Andy ended the day by putting forward the interesting concept of designing in the browser (instead of Photoshop and/or Fireworks). I'd love to try this, but you really need a client on board with this idea to pull it off in my opinion. Good day, good people, good night.

New Jordan Moore Design dot com

I left the old one to die because I tend to have a habit of going off my designs quicker than the milk at the front of the shelf. Hopefully the new redesign stops this. Here is what I set out to achieve:

• Sell sell sell - big intro, fuck the about me stuff it is demoted to 12px
• My work - voila, its there on the right, did you miss it? Didn't think so!
• Hire me button, below the portfolio stuff, follows the eye.

Kept it simple but elegant, no need for additional pages, CMS or blog, I'm doing that here now :)

Enjoy - http://jordanmooredesign.com/