Ink Drop - Obox Theme

Testing the elements

Marc — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 03:05:33 +0000

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas gravida. Suspendisse vel lacus sed purus tincidunt bibendum. Quisque quam. Ut interdum. Proin euismod facilisis est. Nunc nec metus. Morbi ornare, justo quis varius eleifend, est felis tincidunt leo, pharetra condimentum dolor ipsum in dolor. Aenean diam. Phasellus risus purus, feugiat in, dignissim id, rutrum eget, quam. Mauris hendrerit mattis arcu. Praesent ac ligula.

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Pellentesque enim tortor, fringilla et, vestibulum at, gravida sit amet, eros. Etiam congue vulputate massa. Suspendisse tempor massa. Nulla dolor. In porttitor laoreet sapien. Sed a ipsum. Etiam risus nisi, consectetur quis, dictum eget, rutrum nec, mi. Proin bibendum, quam non volutpat tristique, risus sapien faucibus sem, eu congue tortor augue et mauris. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Ut purus felis, sollicitudin sed, pellentesque et, sagittis aliquam, urna. Nulla facilisi. Vestibulum iaculis varius metus.

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Phasellus lorem aliquam, pede morbi, nulla sed. Urna ut a. Mattis viverra dignissim, suspendisse risus, felis a. Sit nec. Sit egestas condimentum. Tempor quisque sit, commodo justo consequat. Augue fermentum, est vulputate et, purus et. Tincidunt quam enim, ac a pede.

Image reference: Aurvandil

A Showcase of Effective Minimalism in Web Design

Marc — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 13:02:34 +0000

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A Day in Town

Marc — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:47:05 +0000

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Proin viverra quam vel augue aliquam gravida. Sed tempor nulla et massa volutpat pretium. Quisque sit amet lacus sit amet sem vestibulum egestas. Maecenas hendrerit accumsan nisl a vehicula. Phasellus viverra sollicitudin nulla at feugiat. Fusce non viverra lacus.

Nunc dignissim, sapien ac fringilla condimentum, tortor erat euismod ligula, a iaculis dolor est in justo. Curabitur malesuada mollis metus a eleifend. Suspendisse id tellus vitae mauris vulputate aliquet. Phasellus vel sapien libero. Aliquam ut tellus lorem, vel gravida leo. Cras fringilla rhoncus iaculis. Suspendisse mauris enim, adipiscing a pulvinar id, accumsan nec metus. Aenean et dui nec erat suscipit iaculis.

Nulla eget magna ante, id condimentum urna. Etiam laoreet erat ac eros aliquet mollis. Fusce tellus tellus, auctor nec vestibulum a, dictum at mi. Aenean in felis justo, vel consectetur justo.

Integer varius faucibus erat nec dictum. Sed faucibus lacus a dui venenatis pharetra. Sed sagittis sem justo. Proin mollis neque vel ipsum volutpat at malesuada magna pulvinar. Donec gravida arcu id risus tempus convallis. Praesent tempus libero nec elit auctor ultricies eu non turpis. Maecenas risus sem, pharetra non consequat non, dictum eu ipsum.

Nulla facilisis pharetra magna et ornare. In quis sapien sed risus scelerisque tristique. Suspendisse at neque enim. Praesent eu elit nisl, vitae commodo augue. Cras interdum massa ac ante placerat gravida. Morbi est lorem, imperdiet ac convallis in, gravida vestibulum libero.

Do you have a 'style'?

Marc — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:00:22 +0000

This is something I have never considered until recently, but have you ever taken a step back to consider your style of design?

It is not something I have thought of until, the other day, someone recently took a look at one of our web designs and said “Yes, that is definitely your style”. Their response surprised me because I have never thought of myself as having a ‘style’ per se. In the past I always based my web sites on inspiration from those I had seen on the net, I was never able to just whip something up by using my ‘style’ of work.

There are definitely designers out there who have a particular style, such as the guys from Envato or Liam from wefunction (awesome grunge work).

When I talk about style, I am not talking about sticking to a particular font or colour, that can make you one dimensional. It is more about your common practices and execution of methods and materials that I am talking about.

I started to take a deeper a look at the work of the designers mentioned above and sought of analyzed what their techniques were and some common practices or materials they use. For example:

Envato sites have a large amount of padding, they also tend to have brilliantly faded background colours
wefunction sites have a grunge style (although I believe that may change soon) and stick to some stringent grid structures. Just take a look at Liam’s PaperCut theme from WooThemes for more.

Based on my ‘findings’ I took a look at the work we have created at OBOX. I took a look at paddings etc. The first thing I noticed was that some of our previous work is… shocking. No grids, no consistancy and just not so great. I like to feel though that we turned the corner towards the end of last year when we created a website for the Southern African Golf Hall of Fame.

Since then I feel that there is much more consistency in our designs and I think we have developed a style! I never noticed it but our favourite sites are those which we have created with up to 20px of padding and using raw materials such as wood or sticky tape. There is nothing I enjoy more than using an array of raw materials to determine colour combos and layouts. On top of that we either use the 10 Pixel Method or 960 Grids.

Have you ever considered what your style is? It helps to seperate you from your peers and can give you a direction for when there is designers block.

Donec tempor suscipit justo

Marc — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 09:57:16 +0000

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam vehicula dapibus nisi ut venenatis. Integer id tincidunt turpis. Duis aliquet consequat laoreet. Phasellus porttitor tempor ante quis lobortis. Aenean mattis faucibus risus, at aliquet tellus pharetra sed.

Nunc varius elit eget nulla sagittis dictum lacinia sapien scelerisque. Aliquam tellus erat, laoreet vitae feugiat vitae, vestibulum at neque. Praesent sollicitudin leo in magna sagittis imperdiet. Suspendisse auctor consectetur feugiat. Sed congue massa ut erat scelerisque mollis.

Nullam viverra mollis viverra. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

Donec tempor suscipit justo, ut consectetur eros viverra a. In consectetur mattis turpis, at sodales odio adipiscing eget. Nam placerat dolor ut augue gravida a mattis ante porttitor. Nam porta tellus feugiat arcu molestie pharetra. Nam auctor nulla eget eros bibendum volutpat. Nam viverra aliquam nisl.

Sed tempor, metus in porta pretium, mi lorem lacinia orci, vel porta dolor justo ut leo. Vestibulum nec quam lorem, scelerisque fermentum lectus.

In pulvinar lorem vel lectus vulputate eu accumsan nibh pulvinar. Praesent quis massa at tellus blandit cursus ac et augue. Etiam neque nisl, tincidunt interdum molestie eget, malesuada a nibh. Vestibulum vulputate condimentum feugiat. Etiam mi libero, ultrices vitae pellentesque id, posuere quis mi.

Ut et arcu sem, et tincidunt eros. Maecenas et leo arcu. Nulla blandit, est pharetra placerat porta, augue dolor laoreet eros, sit amet consequat est enim nec leo. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Vestibulum faucibus, odio quis consectetur lobortis, lectus est iaculis purus, ac euismod tortor lectus non purus. In at pretium enim.

Nam dictum ornare odio at porta. Vivamus faucibus, nisi eget interdum mollis, urna leo cursus leo, in euismod lacus libero sed nisi. Praesent lacinia magna non lorem interdum porttitor. Sed pharetra, enim vel tempus cursus, neque lectus posuere nulla, sed condimentum enim velit nec nisi. Sed in enim ut velit tincidunt imperdiet.

Good design can drive traffic

Marc — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:08:50 +0000

While designing We Are not Freelancers we had one goal in mind. Our goal was to get featured on as many web galleries as possible.

This isn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination, we had never achieved it before so why would we do it now? From start to finish this blog took about 8 days to create but I think of those 8 days I must have spent every hour of them on the design.

Why did we want to be featured on galleries?

Was it ego? Was it recognition?

A little bit and A little bit.

But. The main reason was traffic and the spin offs of that. I strongly believe that if you are a start up blogger and you have a bit of a budget/time to play with you should really put a lot of focus into your design.

We managed to get featured on quite a few CSS galleries and the result was 2000 visitors per day for the first 5 days. That is a lot of visitors for a new blog.

But that was only the start.

With that comes features on other blogs, We Are not Freelancers has been featured on many blogs for ‘Best Footers’, Best Headers’, ‘Best Tweet Birds’, Top this and Top that.

SEO

So getting featured is awesome, your ego gets stroked, your get recognition, you get traffic. But the most important thing is still to come:

SEO rankings… with all the sites we have been featured on, We Are not Freelancers has gained some serious back link horse power. We have put literally no effort into our SEO but, due to the amount of sites we have been mentioned on, our SEO rankings have been impressively boosted purely off back linking.

Get creative and then refine your design

So I highly recommend that you spend a bit more time on either getting creative or finding someone who is creative. We spent hours looking around, analyzing trends etc. We noticed that one popular trend which is under used is hand drawn designs. So we tackled it head on.

This isn’t the only trend out there which is under used. There are many, you just have to dig deep, discover a cool style get inspired, execute good padding, establish a grid structure and then refine, refine, refine, refine, refine.

If you are struggling a little then ask someone in the design world to have a look before you release it, people like Liam McKay are seriously friendly and helpful, Adelle Charles is another. Hell you can even ask me

By doing so you will kick start your viewership in a big way which can only be a good thing for the future. Spend the time now and reap the rewards later, we spent many hours on this design but it not even close to the amount we would have had to spend on SEO’ing and hustling.

Below are some of the sites we have been featured on:

Technique for creating a hand drawn website

Marc — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:52:51 +0000

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum ante odio, lobortis non facilisis eget, dignissim id lorem. Phasellus ultrices cursus nulla in imperdiet. Nam faucibus ultrices nunc nec imperdiet. Donec nisl nisl, egestas at vehicula a, dictum a diam. Nulla pretium luctus augue, sed ultrices nisi consectetur non. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Nunc in nisl nec erat adipiscing euismod. Aliquam nec mollis diam. Donec dignissim nulla eget eros consectetur consequat. Sed rutrum, ante sed imperdiet suscipit, ante orci fringilla nisl, vel ullamcorper tortor lectus vitae mi. Etiam et sagittis dolor. Proin non odio eu mi ultrices aliquam.

Phasellus lectus purus, dapibus et malesuada id, euismod a augue. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Pellentesque eu nunc justo. Etiam suscipit sodales mi, sit amet lacinia eros dignissim ut. Morbi erat risus, lobortis vitae pellentesque a, mattis sed neque. Mauris tincidunt erat vel dui rhoncus sed pellentesque diam eleifend. In nec velit non arcu tincidunt ultrices eget quis nisl. Quisque vitae lorem at lectus accumsan viverra quis at turpis. Curabitur ullamcorper odio nec dolor condimentum consequat. Aenean facilisis hendrerit adipiscing. Nunc porta sapien ac nisl consectetur eu dignissim odio accumsan. Morbi dignissim faucibus facilisis. Vivamus odio neque, lacinia id pellentesque facilisis, fringilla a purus. Nam vel odio dolor. Duis mollis dictum turpis, eget adipiscing justo dapibus nec. Etiam cursus elit sed est ornare congue. Integer aliquam tincidunt quam sed pretium. Mauris dapibus dolor felis. Morbi a dolor risus.

Duis in nunc elit. Proin ultrices justo at nunc consequat a consectetur arcu tristique. Vivamus suscipit, mauris sed sollicitudin dictum, velit velit pharetra magna, quis lobortis nibh dolor ac leo. Pellentesque blandit dictum condimentum. Suspendisse commodo nibh ut velit interdum viverra. Aliquam erat volutpat. Donec faucibus, lorem nec mollis mattis, enim purus lobortis dui, et pellentesque metus lorem sed ante. Fusce mollis vestibulum massa, sed malesuada lacus condimentum quis. In pretium lorem sit amet enim luctus pretium ullamcorper mauris lacinia. Nam ullamcorper metus vel metus aliquam quis elementum nunc ultrices.

Nulla sit amet nisl a enim tempor vestibulum. Donec ultricies neque non ante faucibus porttitor. Curabitur bibendum neque in risus viverra vulputate. Ut ultricies nunc et nisl placerat sodales vel feugiat risus. Fusce quis condimentum nulla. Integer dignissim faucibus ullamcorper. Proin semper orci id lectus sodales ornare. Donec pharetra dapibus rutrum. Vestibulum et nulla mauris. Ut iaculis odio quis odio interdum mollis. Fusce hendrerit velit eu sem tincidunt sagittis. Nam tincidunt fringilla urna, vel blandit lorem posuere sit amet. Aenean elementum lobortis mollis.

Fusce aliquet libero ac justo semper elementum. Nulla placerat metus sed urna bibendum euismod. Sed at augue nisl, eu aliquet erat. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Aenean ligula nulla, rhoncus commodo fringilla rhoncus, faucibus nec ligula. Fusce luctus rhoncus quam, eleifend ornare leo tristique quis. Quisque tincidunt augue sed metus semper dignissim. Aliquam erat volutpat. Vivamus non consectetur lacus. Morbi adipiscing tristique eros eget pharetra. Nulla facilisi. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Donec iaculis vestibulum eros at eleifend. Etiam lacinia, ante convallis iaculis sodales, metus lacus convallis turpis, a vestibulum velit elit sed felis. Nam eu leo risus, in lacinia arcu. Suspendisse id odio ipsum, blandit porta velit. Nulla gravida suscipit malesuada.

Image Reference: ffffound

Quoted from: Dezeen » Blog Archive » Leo Burnett Office by Ministry of Design

static.dezeen.com/uploads/2009/10/LB2.jpg

How to sketch

Marc — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:33:37 +0000

Donec dignissim nulla eget eros consectetur consequat. Sed rutrum, ante sed imperdiet suscipit, ante orci fringilla nisl, vel ullamcorper tortor lectus vitae mi. Etiam et sagittis dolor. Proin non odio eu mi ultrices aliquam.

Curabitur ullamcorper odio nec dolor condimentum consequat. Aenean facilisis hendrerit adipiscing. Nunc porta sapien ac nisl consectetur eu dignissim odio accumsan. Morbi dignissim faucibus facilisis. Vivamus odio neque, lacinia id pellentesque facilisis, fringilla a purus. Nam vel odio dolor. Duis mollis dictum turpis, eget adipiscing justo dapibus nec. Etiam cursus elit sed est ornare congue. Integer aliquam tincidunt quam sed pretium. Mauris dapibus dolor felis. Morbi a dolor risus.

In pretium lorem sit amet enim luctus pretium ullamcorper mauris lacinia. Nam ullamcorper metus vel metus aliquam quis elementum nunc ultrices.

Proin semper orci id lectus sodales ornare. Donec pharetra dapibus rutrum. Vestibulum et nulla mauris. Ut iaculis odio quis odio interdum mollis. Fusce hendrerit velit eu sem tincidunt sagittis. Nam tincidunt fringilla urna, vel blandit lorem posuere sit amet. Aenean elementum lobortis mollis.

Painting a picture

Marc — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:30:02 +0000

Duis in nunc elit. Proin ultrices justo at nunc consequat a consectetur arcu tristique.

Vivamus suscipit, mauris sed sollicitudin dictum, velit velit pharetra magna, quis lobortis nibh dolor ac leo. Pellentesque blandit dictum condimentum. Suspendisse commodo nibh ut velit interdum viverra. Aliquam erat volutpat. Donec faucibus, lorem nec mollis mattis, enim purus lobortis dui, et pellentesque metus lorem sed ante.

Fusce mollis vestibulum massa, sed malesuada lacus condimentum quis. In pretium lorem sit amet enim luctus pretium ullamcorper mauris lacinia. Nam ullamcorper metus vel metus aliquam quis elementum nunc ultrices.

Image reference: Wen-JR

I love hand drawn design

Marc — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:26:30 +0000

Nulla pretium luctus augue, sed ultrices nisi consectetur non. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Nunc in nisl nec erat adipiscing euismod. Aliquam nec mollis diam.

Image reference: kaizeru