Every day we come across cool websites, nicely designed, well put together, good code. Sometimes we come across a site that we LOVE. A site we wish was in our own portfolio, a site that we’ll probably steal a few ideas from in the future. Better than just good, it’s a site that we look at and think “I wish I’d designed that.”
Rather than put together a list of this week’s nice looking sites, I thought I’d focus on a site that I wish I’d done myself. I kind of hope this might be something that others can contribute to in the future.
The Dollar Dreadful Family Library
I’m a big fan of vintage design styles. From 50s retro to Victoriana , they’re tough to achieve in a digital medium, but when done well they really stand out. Great design in a 19th century style is particularly rare, which is one of the reasons why The Dollar Dreadful Family Library is so fantastic.
It’s an incredibly simple site. Really it’s just a page, mirroring almost perfectly the look and feel of a 19th century newspaper. The site sells short stories in PDF form, with a short preview of each story acting as a link on the front page.
The designers have obviously taken great care in their design. The graphics, headers, borders and typefaces are all chosen in a way that complement each other perfectly. The source code is simple and elegant, entirely tableless and fast to load. The page content and language is also clearly tailored to maintain the Victorian style façade.
Would I Change Anything?
Not really. I’d address the few validation errors (housekeeping for the source code, rather than significant problems). Other than that the site is entirely fit for purpose.
I’d love to design something like this that offers more flexibility in its content. The Dollar Dreadful has static content, so they can be a lot more specific in their layout without worrying about things breaking. To achieve a design like this for a blog, or any site with more dynamic content and variable information, would be brilliant.
What Do You Wish You’d Designed?
As I said, this is something that I’m interesting in turning into an irregular series on the site. If there’s any site you really wish had been your work, that you’d like to highlight, then drop me a line at robin@fogofeternity.com.
One Comment
Have you checked out http://www.fisticuffdesign.com ? While it doesn’t capture the Victorian-era newspaper look-n-feel quite as exquisitely as does Dollar Dreadful, it does offer a good-looking vintage design with dynamic content. The only thing I would change is its 800px fixed width. Really, who doesn’t run at least 1024 these days? And on my 1366×768 widescreen laptop display the site looks a bit lost at sea.