Gorgeous and Soothing Colors for Meritage

The colors in this website are absolutely gorgeous. From the moment I landed on this website, I felt like I walked into a peaceful room. You know those kinds of rooms - devoid of fluorescent light, decorated in a traditional kind of way with drapes and wrought iron and nice picture frames, earthy colors that blend, candles, a comfortable couch, maybe a fireplace. That's how this website makes me feel.

Right away, the tone is set with the pale yellow background. I usually opt for a white background, since I think it's more sharp and standard, but this background works really well. The rest of the colors are perfect. From the different shades of orange/brown and gold to the highlight colors of burgundy and green, this website might be one of the best examples I've seen of a warm website.

The details are excellent. In the line "welcome to" the background color is translucent, which is a very soft but dramatic effect. In the nav bar on the left, the green swirly things in the background are very classy. The font and color of Meritage with the background design is really nice.

This website design is excellent!

Great Colors in Bedroom Design

I was flipping through a magazine in a doctor's office and saw this beautiful photo of a bedroom. Although I would never use these colors in my bedroom (I like red, but not this much), I thought that the combination of the colors was really, really nice. Depending on the the client, I can see using these colors in a website.

What I love so much about the color combination is the very pale white and beige background colors, which gives the picture a very clean, fresh, bright look. This room looks so clean, it looks antiseptic.

I really love the bright red comforter with the yellow dots on it. This adds excitement to the photo. It breaks up the pure white with a burst of energy. I probably would not use this color subtly, like an icon before a link, but I might use red as an H1 or H2 tag, or put this big splash of color in the logo or header part to make a statement.

Then sparingly in the design I'd use a touch of yellow and blue. Even the pattern in the bed sheet (if you can see it) is very subtle and nice. Although I like to use solid background colors, I can see using this kind of pattern on the sheet (I think it's called cross hatch - it looks like graph paper). The colors are white on eggshell white.

Even the little orange thing on the dresser ads a nice touch of color, and so does the pale blue bench at the foot of the bed .

These colors would make a great website.

Beautiful, Clean Website with Great Photos for learnaboutwine.com

I bookmarked this site a long time ago for its' nice design, and every time I design a new website, I check out all my bookmarked sites for inspiration. This is a beautiful website. Although a lot of my sites have colored backgrounds, a white background is very dramatic. This is a striking website where all the soft colors work. I like the border around the site and the colored buttons of country blue. I'm not crazy about the page indicator color of bright yellow, but the pale yellow under the top nav bar is very nice.

The photos in this website are great and are the most important part of the visual beauty of this site. The bold, dark burgandys, greens, browns, golds, purples, and blues anchored to the left in the excellent feathered photos give this site an authoritative and polished look.

There's not much content on the pages - maybe they were trying to keep it short for the neat look - but the site would work even if the pages were longer.

Happy New Year everybody! One of my New Year's resolutions is to blog more often about great designs. If you've visited a website that you thought was really nice, send me an email at risa-at-rb3webdesign.com for consideration. Or if you've designed a site and want feedback, with some usability and SEO advice tossed in, send it to me, as well.

I wish everyone a great 2007.

Great Color Balance in NAELA Magazine Cover

I was sent the file of a magazine cover today by my client to add to his website and I was struck by the great cover. Every graphic element works well on this cover. At first, I thought it was the great photo of my client, but then I realized that there was much more involved that made this a great cover.

Everything works together to make it a really great design. The color balance is great. It starts with the orange background. It is dramatic, yet understated at the same time. It's not a bright loud orange, rather it's a woody kind of orange with a very warm feel to it. Then there are the vertical gray lines that break it up. Then there are those things on the wall, whatever they are, but the great odd geometrical shapes and the colors of these shapes make the background very interesting.

The color chosen for NAELA News is perfect, with a burgandy background and white letters. Burgandy, as the boldest color on the page, is the only color that I think works here and creates a nice balance because there is so much going on on the right side of the page. It also creates a great color balance because every color on this pages matches with burgandy, and it makes a bold, assertive statement. It's nice that burgandy is used for some titles on the page.

The bottom color - the golden mustard yellow is a great color choice, and the burgandy and white letters work well on it, and it's a perfect balance for what's going on on top.

I think what might be the subtle finishing touch, and what may be the colors that dictated the colors for the rest of this page, are the colors in my client's tie. I think it pulls it all together.

This cover is one of the best examples of color choice and balance that I've seen.

Nice, Simple, Clean Design

It's strange seeing an ad on TV from Philip Morris with advice on how to quit smoking, but anyway, the TV ad showed a snapshot of their website, which I thought was nice and I visited it.

The nice thing about this website is that the design is nice, clean, and simple. The colors blend well together and I like the photo. I would have had the photo end at the second column for nice alignment and I don't think I would have used orange as a link color, but overall, I think the colors are healthy colors and the site is very fresh looking.

Outstanding Print Ad with Natural Colors

This is a beautiful, peaceful, and well layed out ad. I was waiting in a doctor's office yesterday flipping through a magazine and was struck by the beauty of this ad. I will definately be using these colors in a website I design one day. I think the way a website with these colors and layout would work best is to use white and off-white and just small areas of different greens and browns.

I love the juxtaposition of the square box next to the soft curves of the flower. The white space is very dramatic and the two fonts used is very nice, even with the words going over the leaf.

I couldn't improve this ad in any way.

A Snazzy Design with Bold Colors

Out of Eden Soaps

I have a lot of sites bookmarked under my "Nice Designs" folder and whenever I have a site to design, I look at these sites for ideas. Sometimes it's the colors that I like, or the navigation structure, or the layout.

I can't say I've ever designed a site quite as bold as this one, although I designed The Theresa Foundation four years ago and the childish theme is similar.

What I like about this site is how bright and bold and different it is. It jumps out at you. It's happy. It's whimsical. It's very inviting. I'm posting this even though it competes with my own handmade soap site, Basics Body Care, because it's a great site.

I love the animated gif on the bottom left, and the border, and even the loud background works. Check out the rollover links on the left. How cool is that? Did you rollover seasonal?

Now, I'm not saying anything about usability here, which is integral to an overall good web design. I didn't test this site or even check out many pages. When I think a site has a great design, I'm talking about my first impression - the general feeling I get when I visit the site.

The only design issue I have with this site is that the text is centered and it should be aligned left.