TxP.com home page

jakob · 2008-09-10 08:22:07

I like it! (more than other suggestions up to now). Ties in well with the text-centric pattern and like the fact that it eschews the gloss that one finds everywhere else.

Georgia is the only font used. Everyone else uses sans-serif for their body text.

Others have mentioned newspapers in describing out TXP works, and also the trust users feel when visiting the site.

keeping it minimal

integrated header that could be used across the entire site

Agree in general. Coudal makes a good case for this kind of site, and yours follows a similar vein. Sans-serif fonts could be used for some of the labelling of boxes, though without detracting from the georgia body copy.

Black and white is classy (right?)

Also helps make the yellow as ‘brand identifier’ stand out nicely. Text in grey wouldn’t harm, though to make things subtler and help steer emphasis.

Agree with jukka on unsubtle download button and gradient overlays.

Destry · 2008-09-10 08:47:33

Nice contrib, Dave! Initiative needed. We could spend too many months redoing wireframes to appeal to everyone’s opinions and desires. It should prove more effective in this case to see a little spit-shine too. That’s why I went straight to mockups before. :)

My two cents:

~~Not favorable of Georgia only (and in any case does not follow the humble style guidelines already set forth in wet’s wiki for font styles)~~. Ed. My bad. Looking at the image in 100% mode, I see it works just fine. :) I like it.
Too many lines, looks like one of those prison suits from a 30’s comic. If you eliminated ~~every~~ a few horizontal lines, which is unnecessary for understanding anything, you gain something cleaner that’s just as effective. Ed. Maybe just need to remove the full-width lines from between sections to get rid of the double-line effect which does seem a bit too much.
The reason I wrote “Hemingway used Moleskine®,” is two fold: First, it’s mentioned in “The history of a legendary notebook” that accompanies every Moleskine bought. Second, there’s a thriving community of Moleskine enthusiasts today, just like yesteryear, and most of these people are highly talented artisan, designer, writer types. All-in-all, I think using the nod to Moleskine has a bigger impact than not. (And it rolls better off the tongue.)
I would still like to see another clever way of integrating the different systems so they are not just menu links (that’s fundamental), but also tie-in the subtools and/or menus of each system (wiki, forum, plugins…). The WordPress family of sites does this beautifully. I demonstrated it with my wiki and forum mockups. There’s got to be other takes on it that are clean and user-oriented?

Matthieu, I hope you’re reading and don’t feel put off by the hard critiques from round 1. It’s all good. I for one am expecting to see round 2 from you. (Same goes to arzhou and Dave!)

By the way, all. I’ve skinned a local copy of MW with my initial wiki mocks (link above). I have a few tweaks to make and will then put it to a public demo. I’m using the markup and CSS mods for my local wiki (with minor visual tweaks), so it’s not a loss for me either way; however, outside of the masthead/global nav it should work now for whatever design is finalized because it follows the guidelines as they exist (after changing header font family).

Speaking of style guide, regular text might be something softer than just black, which is well-published to be hard on the eyes when read on white backgrounds. I used #4f4f4f in my mockups and wiki which seems to tame the contrast pretty good before actually appearing gray. Just a thought.

Last edited by Destry (2008-09-10 09:29:23)

Bloke · 2008-09-10 08:54:23

Looking good there nemoorange. Nice work.

I agree with the sentiments in the posts following yours, and would +1 on the following:

color:#333; (or similar) instead of black for copy text takes the edge off the starkness
A sans-serif font for headers, since Georgia for body text works well and keeps with the ‘texty’ theme
A splash of colour in the carousel. Either colour the text box to make the text stand out a bit or maybe pick out just one colour (á la Sin City) from the background pics (whatever they may end up as) and emphasise that slightly. Perhaps yellow if there is any…?
I like the warning by the download box that has shades of Mavericks’ suggestions up there :-)

Very swish though.

Destry · 2008-09-10 09:04:30

Bloke wrote:

A splash of colour in the carousel. Either colour the text box to make the text stand out a bit or maybe pick out just one colour (á la Sin City) from the background pics (whatever they may end up as) and emphasise that slightly. Perhaps yellow if there is any…?

I was going to say I really like the black and white images (though not sure that’s a good idea for actual demos…could be though), but the Sin City thing makes sense and could be sweet! I like the idea of a touch of yellow, or maybe something sepia. That’s all you would need, a single color to accent the images a bit.

EDIT: Dave, with regard to font-family, maybe you could throw up two more clones of your page and make all three linkable in the main nav: One of the additionals would have Georgia headers and sans-serif text. The other having opposite. From that we might be able to really compare and decide what’s the best way to go with font-family while keeping everything else constant. Just a thought.

Last edited by Destry (2008-09-10 09:50:54)

zero · 2008-09-10 10:12:57

Nice work, nemoorange! I’ll make some comments later. I want to throw these into the mix too. I was going to do 6 altogether, one for each main navigation tab, so as to see the variations between home, weblog, docs, forum, resources and assist. But those can wait now. Anyway, here’s home and docs

My reasons for producing these was to move this thing forward because Destry and Matthew are obviously very busy, and Azhou too. So I tried to combine stuff already discussed, plus add some of my own ideas. I know I can depend on you guys to change what’s wrong with them :-) Note the integrated nav and the subnav. For weblog I was going to make the subnav: start, design, development, issues and contact. For the forum: Index Rules Search User list Profile Logout Help. For Resources: no subnav, just one page with links, but eventually it would be txp.org and use its subnav. For Assist: Start, contributors, donate. Those are my first thoughts and probably would change.

Note the blank canvas on the home page. I was going to say we must put something great here, so it’s brilliant to see some actual content, Dave! I also think Maverick’s Reasons Not to try is great, but haven’t figured the best way to put it in, so that’s why I’ve stuck with Bloke’s Reasons to try.

Anyway, what can we take from all contributions so far, so we can make them into something exceptional?

zero · 2008-09-10 10:37:50

Regarding your submission, Dave (nemoorange). First, I like the newspaper feel, it’s classic and simple and txp is about publishing, so +1 for that. I think “Just Write” should be on the opening image. The general idea for those images is great but I would make some small changes to content, I’d also use a bigger font and make more contrast – it’s almost illegible at the moment. That’s also a reason for not using Georgia for body text because sans-serif is easier to read, according to studies. But hey, that means I’ve just changed your whole concept! So it’s something to think about but perhaps only for certain details.

You haven’t included integrated nav – at least as I see it. What would your page look like when you go to forum or docs? wouldn’t it look quite different? Perhaps you could explain or show us your vision for that?

I think you make a very good point about just emphasising about 5 pieces of content. That’s why Jukka and Maniqui’s thoughts, although good ones, are hard to do because you simply cannot fit everything in! Perhaps using “Download Info” on the button would satisfy you, Jukka?

By the way, I haven’t included Demo or Showcase in my own effort because these pages do not exist and would take time to prepare and who is going to do them this side of Xmas? But they can be added later. For now, I just think that using the Featured Sites page with prominent links to We Love TXP and the Let’s See Yours Then forum is practical and sufficient.

zero · 2008-09-10 15:17:16

Is everybody busy making their sooper-dooper version :-)

I’ve done some more, with slightly differing styles, and nav included for you to think about so we can get practical and get this thing done.

weblog
forum
assist v2
assist v3

els · 2008-09-10 18:36:26

jakob wrote:

I like it! (more than other suggestions up to now).

I agree 100%! Unfortunately I don’t have the time at the moment to do anything more than skim over this thread now and then and look at the designs, but this one really stands out for me.

renobird · 2008-09-11 01:23:55

Wow. This has become such a “horse by committee”.
No offense to all of you hard at work…but damn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee

Don’t get your leotard in bunch.
I’m just making a joke.

)

Last edited by renobird (2008-09-11 01:27:07)

Gocom · 2008-09-11 02:01:23

renobird wrote:

Wow. This has become such a “horse by committee”…

So true. Laught my ass off (theorically) :D

wet · 2008-09-11 05:43:08

renobird wrote:

Wow. This has become such a “horse by committee”.

Actually, not to a dangerous extent. Matthew Smith does the design with whatever inspiration and contributions he deems appropriate. Given that he operates a collection of influences by trade, I’m quite confident that he would know how to handle this.

Destry · 2008-09-11 07:50:45

I agree on the horse by committee statement, though I think it has afflicted the content efforts more than the design effort so far.

Jakob wrote:

I like it! (more than other suggestions up to now).

Els wrote:

I agree 100%!

I agree too, but let us all not forget (Ed.), as far as .com designs go (what we can safely call “mockups”), there’s only been two (to my knowledge): Dave’s and zero’s. It wouldn’t be right to compare a mockup against a wireframe, or a mockup with another mockup of a different animal (e.g., wiki). The nice thing about both mockups so far is they are extrapolations of wireframe contributions (Azhou’s, Matthieu’s and Mine), of which two are themselves iterations. In reflection, that seems not to be quite so “horse by committee.”

A style guide for color and font characteristics is a bit different in that this should be compared across different animals to ensure a consistent baseline look. Other design elements not so much. For example, I wouldn’t use all the horizontal lines in Dave’s design for the wiki; there’s no reason for that in a wiki where the objective is to write and read clearly. (Nor, personally, do I think there’s much reason for it in .com, but that’s not my call.) I have since gone with Georgia headers in my wiki styles (now being savvy of wet’s style guide), keeping sans-serif in normal text, and it does look nice. (I think all-Georgia is interesting, but considering we need some consistency in an integrated way, it’s not the best choice in this case.)

Speaking of making calls…

wet wrote:

Matthew Smith does the design with whatever inspiration and contributions he deems appropriate.

That, people, is a clear message that says there is a mechanism here (at least in this instance). I for one am happy for that even if it means other good ideas take a backseat. Pressure’s on, Matthieu.

Last edited by Destry (2008-09-11 11:24:05)

jakob · 2008-09-11 10:05:11

It wouldn’t be right to compare a mockup against a wireframe

Sure, I was just expressing enthusiasm for what I saw :-) There’s no great criticism of other proposals implied, just what it says. Feedback and enthusiasm is just that. When the wireframes are fleshed out, they too will elucidate more of an emotional response.

BTW: Destry, can you please change the “it” you have linked to? I know you meant well by linking but I was referring to nemoorange’s proposal.

Destry · 2008-09-11 11:18:31

Oops! Terribly sorry, Jakob. Indeed, that was incorrectly linked. In fact so was the “Dave’s” link further in. * sigh * You are correct, I only linked it at all to make it more understood what your quote was mentioning. I guess it backfired.

I totally understand and agree with your enthusiasm. I like Dave’s demo too. Truly. I simply constructed that post badly. My apologies. In fact, I wasn’t really speaking directly to you or Els, only using your statements as context for my more general message, which is that not much (~~tangibly~~ graphically speaking) has been shared, in fact. I guess I could have said that without any quoting. :)

Sorry for the confusion.

On a diff note: I’ve been thinking what I said about Dave’s horizontal lines not belonging in a wiki, and now I’m having doubts. I don’t think so in the body copy, no, but it could work okay as divisions in the peripheral areas. We’ll see how things go. I might throw another wiki mock together paralleling Dave’s idea just for fun. “Might” being a very weighty word there. :)

Last edited by Destry (2008-09-11 12:29:37)

squaredeye · 2008-09-11 13:45:08

folks,
my appologies.
I hadn’t received any updates to this post and thought it was still dormant. I’m catching up on it today.

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#136 2008-09-10 08:22:07

Re: TxP.com home page

#137 2008-09-10 08:47:33

Re: TxP.com home page

#138 2008-09-10 08:54:23

Re: TxP.com home page

#139 2008-09-10 09:04:30

Re: TxP.com home page

#140 2008-09-10 10:12:57

Re: TxP.com home page

#141 2008-09-10 10:37:50

Re: TxP.com home page

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Re: TxP.com home page

#143 2008-09-10 18:36:26

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