Dark Times

You should be seeing a darker color scheme on the site. I just updated the site for 2008. It’s phase I of the project I want to start and will likely post about over the weekend. If you are looking for stuff that used to be in the sidebar, look down at the bottom of the screen. Should be pretty helpful.

Give me any feedback in the comments and thanks for visiting.

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  • http://www.musingsofstressedoutmom.blogspot.com cmhl

    very nice— love it. very readable. I do miss the logo though…

  • http://holyschmidt.blogspot.com Holy Schmidt! (Melanie)

    Doesn’t Coco deserve a mention in the “About” area?

    Poor neglected puppy!

  • Chloe

    Different. I was a little freaked at first because I have you bookmarked right next to “Brainhell”, which I thought I’d clicked, only to have your charcoal site come to light — his is black.

    Anyway, nice.

  • http://lismitchell.net pixelfish

    I love the new colours and the light-on-dark look. The only thing I’d change is to bump up the hex on that green colour in the top nav and the alt#comments. On my screen it’s a little too dark and the thinner font in the dates and top nav make it a little hard to read. (I’m on a PC laptop, btw, viewing this in Firefox.) Also I love the interplay of negative space in the footer. Nice job.

    (RE: Sybil@ 24’s comment on professionalism — sure, I guess it’s less professional from some views. But Jon’s site is neither the NYT or the WSJ or Forbes or some stodgy financial site. And he talks about tech a lot, so the dark colours actually make sense since a lot of tech demos show up better against dark backgrounds. Ars Technica has a non-standard colour scheme as well, and I don’t think it renders them less professional. Of course, I speak as a graphic designer who was just forced to give a work site a WSJ/NYT treatment to render it more “acceptable” to focus groups so I’m a tad bitter.)

  • Rachel

    I think the site is far more representative of you. The old site was very clean and friendly, but I always used to think “Gee, this guy is a talented web designer, why doesn’t his own site reflect his professional, design-forward sensibility?” I know everyone is saying they miss the blurb logo, but I don’t. You’ve retained the most interesting part of it — the “droplet” shape — in the current design, and in an interesting way.

    I think the color palette you chose is modern and beautiful. The small shots of “brights” (I love them all) work really well with the neutral background. And the neutrals you chose work perfectly together — you got just the right chocolatey brown to pop against the black without too much contrast, and the grey is a great warm tone.

    I can see why you moved some content down to the bottom: the integration of the posting area with the old sidebar material looks really good the way you have it, with each kind of interlocking the other (using the droplet motif), but I do find the sidebar empty. Again, no doubt you will consider this and address it in some interesting way.

    Congrats. I love it. I’m sure you’ll be tweaking it as you go and I look forward watching that process.

  • http://www.workroom.org workroom

    maybe cos i’m on a bright mc but i agree with mike
    white text on dark bg gives me eyestrain/headache within 5 mins

    even an #E8E8E8 would hurt less

  • http://madnessmadnessisay.blogspot.com liv

    gotta say i liked it better the other way. something about the vibe just was more appealing to me.

  • Philippe

    I don’t like it:
    – Reading white text on dark background hurts.
    – It makes the adds too/more intrusive.
    – The separation between each post is less obvious than before, maybe because the titles are also white, like the rest of the text.
    – The bottom bit is neat, unfortunately it lies… at the bottom — how many people ever scrawl down the very bottom of a blog? Regular readers will read the first 2–3 entries and will never get a chance to see your recent flickr photos (a shame because they are always great) and listenings.
    Sorry for not being positive.

  • Megan64

    Oui! Je l’aime.

  • Erin

    I have a big monitor but still find the font a little hard to read. It’s like the font is too small and possibly too narrow against the darkness.

  • http://www.beingprimitive.com Will Adam

    Nice! Good colors, works really well!

  • Kim

    Blurb, I really like the new layout. I have always been a fan of Dark backgrounds and like text. I think that look more professional. I look forward to seeing what else you have in store for this site.

  • Rene

    Love the color and the simplified layout. Any way to make the blurbomat logo bigger?

  • keagansmom

    me likey

  • bre

    I agree with whoever said to bring some more of the excitement going on in the bottom to the top. I love the colors though!

  • Eric G

    I find the reversed text to be a bit hard on the eyes for extended reading. I think maybe if there were a bit less contrast, as on Gruber’s site. Maybe changing the text from white to a light gray or some muted light color.

    I also miss the old logo, but I can see where it doesn’t work as well in this design.

  • http://www.jillmormon.com Jill

    *giggles*

    I think it’s cute that you and Heather are going goth this year!

    j/k

    I love the new look. Something about black just says classy and sophisticated. Very nice. The footer design is lovely. Perhaps a bit of that in the header?

  • Jaap

    Hi Jon,

    Just noticed that Heather is using Vimeo to publish video. Any reason you choose Vimeo and not YouTube?

    Take care,
    Jaap

  • memikeyounot

    Also casting a vote, not that it matters, against dark background,white letters. It’s more difficult for these old man eyes to read.

  • http://www.hillbillyplease.com/blog/ jane

    Very nice. Very easy on the eyes.

  • http://callipygianchronicle.wordpress.com Yolanda

    Sadly, white text on dark backgrounds makes my eyes very, very sad. I love the layout, but dark text with light backgrounds makes for much easier reading. For me, at least.

  • amanda

    i LIKE the colors and design, but am i the only one that things the darker colors makes the ads “scream”? they seem to be yelling at me since they now stand out so much more… not as much when the ads are narrow, but the larger squares are particularly vocal.

  • lostinutah

    Little hard on my eyes. But that’s just me.

  • stacy

    Hmmm. While I like these colors in a sort of general sense, the white-font-on-dark-background thing is putting spots in front of my eyes. Sorry. I do really love the design of the footer, though.

  • Tamara

    OK I give up what the hell is the ‘tweets’ thing!

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