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Retinart

Retinart

July 21st, 2010 Category: CSS

14 comments to “Retinart”

  1. Carl Rosekilly Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 7:46 am

    I can see what’s trying to be achieved here with the concept and approach but for me it’s just lacking…

    When you approach something that requires typographical attention to this degree in order for the page to work, I think the fundamentals are lacking and the overall execution isn’t quite there to achieve the appeal and effect.

    If this is best of the web then we’re in a sorry state of affairs.

    Sorry for what may appear to be harsh criticism but I am a big fan of old and traditional typography and I just don’t think the level is up to scratch here, there’s a definite lack of hierarchy.

    You have posted about JAN TSCHICHOLD’S INSPIRING PENGUINS, I’d suggest looking at his work in more detail, as he was one of the early pioneers of beautiful typography and his style could influence, to create a more positive impact.

    Look at the relationships between headers and body copy, post dates, archives they all need to pull the eye in their own individual way, they could be perceived as merging into one at the moment,

    I’m going to stop now…

  2. Rich Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 8:03 am

    Good thing this is under CSS…. Pretty horribly bland site.

  3. Alexander Ross Charchar Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 8:06 am

    Hi Carl,

    Thanks for taking the time to write what you think of Retinart, regardless of what most bloggers might say, I genuinely appreciate that you gave your feedback :)

    I would by lying if I said I wasn’t happy with my current design, but I have no doubt it’s rough around an edge or two. While it isn’t an excuse, I am primarily a print guy — in fact, it’s only ever been for retinart.net that I’ve touched web stuff and this is the most extensive design I’ve ever done, so I’m not going to pretend I haven’t got a lot to learn.

    You said that you feel that all the individual pieces (dates, headers, copy) merge into one — while I didn’t want it to be ultra flat, I did want them to be subtle, rather than each garner for more attention than is deserved. It’s the content in the middle that I’m most concerned with and with the weight of my header images, I felt that giving too much strength to each piece element of the the site would cause too much chaos. I also wanted to ensure that the eye wasn’t too strongly pulled in a million different directions, but rather guided through one path.

    Also, I think the biggest lesson that Tschichold could teach us isn’t about how to have super-strong typography that screams and grabs attention, but having typography that respects the content — that’s what I’ve attempted.

    But as I said, I really appreciate the feedback and I will absolutely have another look at the subtlety of the typography (I’m actually wanting to fine-tune the vertical harmony as I’m not thrilled with it at the moment).

    Again, I really appreciate your time to offer up some feedback :)

  4. Carl Rosekilly Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 8:17 am

    @Alexander

    Thanks for taking my harsh criticism on the chin and bouncing back with your reasons for approaching things in the way that you have, I am all for subtlety and as I have already stated I appreciate what you’re trying to achieve and I think if you’re predominantly print based you could really make this site work to your advantage.

    I actually don’t mind your main content area the body copy is pretty much there there’s a nice relationship of font size and leading, a nice clarity shall we say. Have you thought about introducing a LARGE -ER intro letter to each post, 1st paragraph as an intro? I think your post headings could be stripped of the ALL CAPS and just replaced with bold don’t think you need to replace the size.

    Everything in the right hand column is a little tight, could do with more clarity along here, you know what I am getting at and I’m not here to teach you how to suck eggs as you obviously have some talents.

    I’d just spend a little more time on refining things to make this really stand out from what is a very ’sheep orientated web crowd’.

    Good luck and well done on receiving the exposure. You just get opinionated people like me dropping my pennies worth, hope it hasn’t been too painful!

  5. dudeydudeydude Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 8:31 am

    “Design should never say, “look at me.” It should always say, “Look at this.”
    - David Carib

    Now if only more web designers understood and applied that thinking…

  6. Carl Rosekilly Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 9:02 am

    …If you’re “looking at ME” you will be “LOOKING AT THIS” ;-)

  7. Ken Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 9:39 am

    I really like massive footers! I always scroll to the bottom of sites to check if they did something cool with the footer. Anyone else do this?

  8. Rich Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 9:45 am

    I agree with Carls feedback. The typography is mainly what needs to be improved in my opinion. Small caps first line intro like Carl said would work nice, and maybe larger headers so they don’t have to be bold. Another issue I’m having is on the right column with the arrows for articles and topics - they touch the divider bar and that bothers me a bit since it seems to break up the little breathing room there is over there.

  9. Rich Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 9:46 am

    Just noticed the footer like Ken pointed out and sadly it is my favorite part of the site haha… Everything from the footer up to about the author just has a really nice flow about it. Almost like a newspaper

  10. Carl Rosekilly Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 9:56 am

    @ken and rich

    The footer is most certainly the nicest part of the site, I’m wondering how the site would look if the ‘dotted lines’ that contain each section encompassed each post?

    Just a thought…

    Also is everything intentionally off centre?

  11. dudeydudeydude Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 10:12 am

    @Carl:

    I take it (and I hope) you were kidding? :)

  12. Carl Rosekilly Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 10:15 am

    @dude

    Of course ;-)

  13. David Perel Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 1:35 pm

    Too much Serif going on here and not enough attention paid to the line-heights and general white space of the actual content.

    I do like the textures but the font execution spoiled the potential.

  14. David Perel Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 4:35 pm

    Peeps, check this article from the site: http://retinart.net/graphic-design/secret-law-of-page-harmony

    Interesting if you didn’t know about it.

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