Screengrab AFC
Looks like designers aren’t tired of black in web design any more, because I’m even spotting it on fine art websites, typically the last people to catch on to anything trendy. ArtInfo’s new all black all the time site immediately comes to mind, a site that now looks decent even if it’s unnavigable. Sadly color alone can’t solve this outfit’s problems. Anyone else try to use their sale index? Look forward to an exercise in torture – users have to click five million different check boxes just to see a result that might be useful. It’s also still woefully incomplete, a disappointment given that they’ve been working on it for nearly three years now.
Rhizome also has a fancy new black masthead. Their new site improves so much upon their old design, that I am still, one month later, dazzled by its effects. In this case, the aesthetic of the black masthead recalls fancy gadgetry or the design of downloadable platforms such as Miro. It literally looks like what it is supposed to do. This same concept might also be applied to the mom blog/personal diary site dooce, her masthead now resembling a giant TV console. In Heather Armstrong’s case though, it would seem the new design simply clears more room for advertising and traffic generating headings such as daily photo, daily dog (chuck) and daily style. It’s largely empty content, but not worth complaining about since nobody goes to her site looking for important information about anything.
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