Post by Blitzzoshi on Oct 13, 2010 19:54:02 GMT -5
I have work to do tonight, but I'm gonna start this topic off so I can get some ideas down. Others are welcome to comment on this.
The Need for a New Look
So, what's wrong with our current look? Well, obviously we've had it for several years and it's starting to look a bit worn. Aside from that, we have some issues. Namely, we still have a lot of default-ish icons. We do have a few custom icons, though the ones in the Info Center are a bit... non-descriptive and don't really fit. We lack our own icon for birthdays. We lack icons for all the items along the top bar, really. And even with custom icons, these are not necessarily well-coordinated with the general look-and-feel of the site.
Our color palette needs a refresh. Almost all the items here are themed a slightly unsaturated light-lavender, with navy text. In a few places, we do have some headers with a dark navy background and white text, but that's pretty much all we have in terms of variation. We only use one hue. Not only that, but we use the same shade of that hue across most of the theme. This is not only bland, but it also presents problems for usability because we have a partially-colorblind user here who claims the theme is nearly unusable for him due to a lack of contrast.
Ideas on the New Look
Here's some stuff off the top of my head. Others can make suggestions, too.
We're keeping the general blue hue for most items, but with more variation. Namely, posts will have a near-white background to help readability (most light-color themes use a white or near-white in this fashion). Poster information column on the left can be a light-ish blue to form a visual distinction between it and the the actual post content area, so the user is drawn to the post itself. I feel like we should introduce a second hue for some areas of the site. Perhaps green? Input is welcome.
Page background might be a mid-blue color. The current page background color is almost identical to the background color used by content. That's pretty bad. It's even worse on those days when the images for our style refuse to load so even near the top we lose the distinction between the content and the margins of the page.
Regarding graphic style, I think we should go for something very clean. A lot of styles try to go for a glassy/liquid/whatever look. Honestly I think they complicate the look. Some soft gradients and mildly visible shadows for items like headers would look pretty nice, I think.
Keep in mind that we are designing our style for a site that is, well, a Yoshi fan forum. Thus, the style needs to reflect that kind of atmosphere. Yoshi doesn't drive souped-up cars or build liquid-cooled PCs (well, okay, some fancharacters might, but that's not the point I'm making here). Instead I suggest a clean and simple look to complement Yoshi's character design.
Ideally, all artwork should be original. When I first came to Yoshi's Corner, seeing original artwork on the forum banner up at top made a profound impact on me and really influenced me to join. People can volunteer to work on art for this, but ideally most of the icons and the like will be adopted to a clean, vectorized final look (think, some of the icons you see in various icon themes for the GNOME desktop environment).
And now for something involving a greater deal of artistic freedom. I want to continue the tradition of having user-made banners on a rotation, because they really contribute to the overall fan-created atmosphere that brought me here in the first place. I think this time we could do with a little standardization, however. I remember creating the basic lineart for a logo (here), which I ought to spruce up a little. I was thinking that artwork could be submitted for inclusion as a banner image, but without the logo, instead replaced by the standardized logo, and also with styled edges around the image to fit with the page theming. If you have created any banner image and still have the original, with the logo on a separate layer, feel free to resubmit it without the logo.
That's pretty much what I can think of so far. Again, suggestions are welcome, and be sure to resubmit your banners. I'll see about maybe creating some mockups at some point.
The Need for a New Look
So, what's wrong with our current look? Well, obviously we've had it for several years and it's starting to look a bit worn. Aside from that, we have some issues. Namely, we still have a lot of default-ish icons. We do have a few custom icons, though the ones in the Info Center are a bit... non-descriptive and don't really fit. We lack our own icon for birthdays. We lack icons for all the items along the top bar, really. And even with custom icons, these are not necessarily well-coordinated with the general look-and-feel of the site.
Our color palette needs a refresh. Almost all the items here are themed a slightly unsaturated light-lavender, with navy text. In a few places, we do have some headers with a dark navy background and white text, but that's pretty much all we have in terms of variation. We only use one hue. Not only that, but we use the same shade of that hue across most of the theme. This is not only bland, but it also presents problems for usability because we have a partially-colorblind user here who claims the theme is nearly unusable for him due to a lack of contrast.
Ideas on the New Look
Here's some stuff off the top of my head. Others can make suggestions, too.
We're keeping the general blue hue for most items, but with more variation. Namely, posts will have a near-white background to help readability (most light-color themes use a white or near-white in this fashion). Poster information column on the left can be a light-ish blue to form a visual distinction between it and the the actual post content area, so the user is drawn to the post itself. I feel like we should introduce a second hue for some areas of the site. Perhaps green? Input is welcome.
Page background might be a mid-blue color. The current page background color is almost identical to the background color used by content. That's pretty bad. It's even worse on those days when the images for our style refuse to load so even near the top we lose the distinction between the content and the margins of the page.
Regarding graphic style, I think we should go for something very clean. A lot of styles try to go for a glassy/liquid/whatever look. Honestly I think they complicate the look. Some soft gradients and mildly visible shadows for items like headers would look pretty nice, I think.
Keep in mind that we are designing our style for a site that is, well, a Yoshi fan forum. Thus, the style needs to reflect that kind of atmosphere. Yoshi doesn't drive souped-up cars or build liquid-cooled PCs (well, okay, some fancharacters might, but that's not the point I'm making here). Instead I suggest a clean and simple look to complement Yoshi's character design.
Ideally, all artwork should be original. When I first came to Yoshi's Corner, seeing original artwork on the forum banner up at top made a profound impact on me and really influenced me to join. People can volunteer to work on art for this, but ideally most of the icons and the like will be adopted to a clean, vectorized final look (think, some of the icons you see in various icon themes for the GNOME desktop environment).
And now for something involving a greater deal of artistic freedom. I want to continue the tradition of having user-made banners on a rotation, because they really contribute to the overall fan-created atmosphere that brought me here in the first place. I think this time we could do with a little standardization, however. I remember creating the basic lineart for a logo (here), which I ought to spruce up a little. I was thinking that artwork could be submitted for inclusion as a banner image, but without the logo, instead replaced by the standardized logo, and also with styled edges around the image to fit with the page theming. If you have created any banner image and still have the original, with the logo on a separate layer, feel free to resubmit it without the logo.
That's pretty much what I can think of so far. Again, suggestions are welcome, and be sure to resubmit your banners. I'll see about maybe creating some mockups at some point.
