All the cool kids are dribbling, why can’t I?
I haven’t felt this left out since my mum refused to buy me proper Nike trainers at school. Dribbbling is a new phenomenom all about sharing what you are working on and getting encouraging, inspiring and constructive feedback from other designers.
I think it is a fantastic idea and I love the execution of it, the site is simply stunning. Unfortunately dribbble is still an invite only proposition which is a bit whack if you are not friends of friends of the creators or an internationally renowned design super hero.
Whilst I am still unable to dribbble in public I thought I would dribbble in private and put out a blog post with the shots I would be dribbbling if I could.
These shots are both from projects I am currently working on and any dribbble-esque feedback on either would be much appreciated.
A current client project
An ongoing personal project
PS - If anyone out there has a spare dribbble invite they could send my way I’d be as happy as a kid with proper Nike trainers.
UPDATE: I now have my very own Nike trainers thanks to the lovely Matt Carey!
Late last night I finished designing my new blog theme. I was feeling pretty tired and decided that it was time to hit the sack. I was on my way to the bathroom to brush my teeth when something rather strange happened.
En route to the bathroom I walked past a pair of shoes which my girlfriend had dropped in the hallway by the front door. I stopped mid step and did a double take, then it hit me… these shoes where a very similar colour to the main background colour used in the new blog theme.
Although this suprised me a little I didn’t think too much of it, after all there are lots of green things in my house. It was then that I noticed the wallpaper.
Much to my disbelief the wallpaper in the hallway (dusky red/pink colour) was almost identical to the other main accent colour from the new design. I had been walking down this same hallway many times a day since starting the new theme, was there some kind of connection or was I imagining it? Feeling somewhat confused I went back to the study and got the camera, above is the picture I took. I did not change any of the colours in photoshop and did no further design work on the blog after taking it. As you can see the similarity is quite astonishing.
How long had the shoes been lying there? Had the shoe/wallpaper combo subconsciously influenced my new blog theme? Or was the whole thing just a coincidence? I have no idea.
Of all the websites that I have created this remains one of my favourites. It was a refreshing project because for once I had all the content for the site before I actually started designing, a rare luxury in this industry. The main idea behind the site was that all the content would be written on the back of a seaside postcard. I thought that this would give the site a relaxed feeling and provoke site users to make a positive association between the site and their previous holidays.
The illustrations for the site where created using Fireworks CS3 on the mac. To create the gradient colour scheme for the background I used a colour picker to carefully select swatches from a photo of an idyllic desert island beach which i found on flickr. The swirly font used for the site is Giddyup Std and it is implemented using a combination of background images and sifr.
The handwriting style font along, the crimped, stamp-like edges for photos and the homemade Noss Mayo postmark all help to reinforce the postcard themes that I wanted to get across. These same themes where also used to create some double sided postcard layouts for The Wheelhouse to use as oversized business cards/flyers (see below).
Following it’s release the website was featured on numerous CSS galleries and was later included in Vandelay Design’s
25+ Inspiring Designs by Land, Sea & Air blog article and psd.tuts+ Inspiration: Water and Ice blog. It is always nice to find out that your work is appreciated.