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 fter the design of the Quiotix logo was agreed
upon, we entered the web design stage of the project. It was long
before I could start working with HTML, however. Web design isn't
about HTML just as architecture isn't about bricks and mortar.
As with the logo, I first used my drawing
program to create GIF images for design drafts of entire web pages
and sent them to Brian for discussion. Naturally, my first shot was
at the front page design, and only after its concept was more or
less worked out I moved to drafting a generic subpage. As you can see from the original site that I preserved for
comparison, the site's front page isn't packed with information
which is convenient for our illustration purposes.
Although the color scheme of the logo (see Fig. 4), with black for the text and
bright blue for the visual, remained unchanged for most part of the
logo design stage, it shouldn't be considered fixed. As I mentioned elsewhere, a good logo
must not depend upon the use of colors. This particular pair
of colors (black and blue) looks quite good when the logo is shown
by itself, over a white background; but the same colors may turn
inappropriate when the logo is placed on another background and
surrounded by other elements with their own colors.
That's why, when I started working on the front page design, I
didn't take the color scheme of the logo as a base. Instead, I tried
to tame quite another area of the color wheel, the one that I once
called "swampy, muddy,
saprogenic"---the desaturated blends of yellow and green, the color
usually called "khaki." Actually I already have one relatively
successful attempt to colonize
this color realm, but now I wanted to see if I can manage a more
pronounced khaki tint without the page becoming too
military-looking.
I chose the soft greenish background color (Fig. 6) and
supported it by the more saturated (but similar in hue) color of the
logo visual and the links. In an attempt to make the logo more
prominent on the page, I used the "spotlight" effect placing it over
a circular white spot with blurred edges. Also, I made the logo's
shape feel more like a "real thing" by adding a drop shadow and
placing an elliptic gradient over the shape, which thus looked as a
metallic (golden?) surface reflecting the light of a lamp.
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Fig. 6: The first step in the quagmire |
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For the navigation bar, I used the Lucida Sans font in small size,
with the "out-of-focus" doubling effect and barely visible
background rectangles. At this early stage when the main design idea
of the site was only groped for, I tried a solution dictated by the
current design fashion---indeed, the Lucida Sans font (as well as
its analogs, e.g. Officina Sans) in very small font sizes and with
various artificial distortion techniques is now a highly popular
design theme.
However, in my case this theme wasn't supported by anything on the
page, so the "khaki" version was a moderate success. To a fresh eye,
the page looks simply unbalanced; the bright spot of the logo is
too large an element, while the elusive, whimsical buttons are
just difficult to discern. The top left corner contrasts
too much with the rest of the page.
Thus, my next attempt was mostly driven by the desire to balance the
logo (I decided to keep the spotlight effect that Brian liked) by
other page elements, mainly by the navigation bar graphics. I also
completely changed the color scheme, dashing somehow towards the other
extreme: cold blue and white over gray (Fig. 7).
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Fig. 7: A winter landscape with the moon and northern lights |
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First came the idea to stretch the kernel of the logo's spotlight to
the right with a wide white horizontal strip serving as a background
for the navigation bar. This way, I avoided placing the "QUIOTIX"
title in the logo over a white-to-gray gradient which could damage
its readability. But the main advantage of the strip was that it
united the left and the right wings of the page top into a solid whole.
The spotlight isn't floating any more like a moon in the amorphous
sky, but sets a coordinate origin for the entire page.
However, the strip couldn't be left just plain, boring white.
Logically, it is the ideal background for placing the main graphic
theme of the site---now it was clear that just the logo wasn't
enough, something else was necessary to make the design persuasive.
My first try was the company's title enlarged, blurred out, and
repeated twice with a shift. Over this suggestive background I
placed "buttons" made of the Lucida Sans labels and uniform gray
semi-transparent rectangles. At the page bottom, a narrower
horizontal bar of similar design held the copyright and address
footer.
This version was definitely better than the previous one, but
not good enough. The style of the buttons was still alien to the
logo/spotlight composition, and to Brian's taste, the vague "QUIOTIX"
lettering in the role of background was a bit "over the top."
Finally, the color scheme was simply too dry and monochromatic. I
liked the gray background, but the magenta of the logo and links
wasn't enough to spice it up.
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