The PASZ.COM Design Philosophy

Though I'm not a web designer by trade (I'm a web developer -- totally different thing) I definitely have a lot of opinions when it comes to web design. Thus, with my new site launching, I thought I'd post the basic tenets I followed while building the site.

1. Don't look like every other web site. Every time I've built a home page (this is the 3rd one) I've tried to break out of the confines of the standard grid-based layout. I think the "bubbles" or whatever you want to call them, give the site pages a sense of being more free-form than a typical webpage. Web pages are too confined and static. This is meant to be a breath of fresh air.


2. Make things visually interesting, but easy to navigate. Find a happy medium. I'm using fades and simple animations, but hopefully in a way that makes sense and enhances the page, drawing the eye to particular details. I'm avoiding animations that are gratuitous.


3. Don't use Flash unless it's really necessary. Version 1 of the home page, which I built about 4 years ago, was entirely Flash-based. I liked the freedom offered by Flash, but I worried about accessibility. I didn't want to turn off people who didn't like Flash for whatever reason. (I also was afraid that the concept for that site was a little too "out there" for some people.) For the most part, this version of the site does not use Flash.


4. Use CSS as much as possible to define the layout. The main benefit being that I can leverage this code for other pages on the site.

I don't expect it will be everyone's cup of tea. Certainly some could take issue with the fact that it's pretty dark. But with the limited art resources I have at my disposal, I decided building it dark was easier.

I'm looking forward to people's feedback. Oh, and some day I'd love to get the blog and articles and all the other pages included in the new layout, but that just isn't on my todo list for the near future. :/