Heading Northe

When I first created True Northe way back when, it was Flash based. The idea of True Northe came to me while I was trying to go to sleep (as many ideas do) and in my mind’s eye I saw a compass with a turning needle, and the gold navigation to the left. Since I fell in love with the idea of the compass, I wanted to make it an integral design element. Unfortunately, Flash is not very search engine friendly, and users who did not have DSL or higher did not want to wait for the page to load. Furthermore, updating a Flash site with new information proved rather tricky. There was a time when I created a splash screen for users who could chose to see the Flash site, or enter an HTML only site (True Northe 2.0).

So, per my usual fashion, I decided to change the site to something that was brighter, younger, and much more vibrant. What I came up with was a design that I really liked, using colors not often seen on the internet. I kept the compass displayed prominently in the design on the home page. I limited the web site to just four pages, keeping the site as small as possible. Less is more, after all.

But it wasn’t long after I launched the new site that I was unhappy with it. The colors were too bright, too pink, and too blue.

So I took it back to the drawing board and did what I always do with my clients: I thought about branding. Why is True Northe what it is, and how is it different from my competitors? True Northe is my first business venture, and thus I poured a lot of myself into the business. Therefore I needed a site that reflected my style. Since I’m young, I also wanted a design that was vibrant, energetic, and conveyed movement. I certainly wanted a lot of color, but in splashes, and located to certain areas. Finally, and probably most importantly, I wanted the site to reflect modern design standards, and be easily updated with new information and projects.

My first attempt was certainly colorful, but also WAY too busy. I subscribe to a few methods of thought that have always kept me in the right state of mind: less is more, and keep it simple stupid. So this first design just wasn’t that. The more layers that I hid in Photoshop, the better the design and the less anxiety I felt when looking at the site.

But I liked how the site was laid out. I liked the three columns under the main header, highlighting certain information without bombarding the user with a lot of text: less is more.

I also liked having an attractive footer, an area that is frequently overlooked on a web site, but should also be part of the design. However the treatment seen here is far too colorful and still too busy.

My second attempt at this design concept was better, but still too much. I removed most of the background color and limited it to the header. But I still felt like it was missing something. For one, it wasn’t practical. Because I develop many of my own sites, I could easily see the drawback of having a header that was so wide. I try to limit the width of my sites to 1024 pixels.

With this iteration, I knew I was getting closer. The site was very bright and clean, yet still used texture and color appropriately. The footer was also coming into its own.

Finally I got a site that did everything I needed it too do, and looked nice. While I wanted a lot of color, I knew that multiple colors had to be in a concentrated area, otherwise it would be much too busy and distracting. I also wanted the colors to be more custom and not look as though they came directly “out of the tube” of paint. Rather than reworking the ship, I imported the original that I created in Corel Paint, so it was larger, and tweaked it further in Photoshop, giving it the right amount of pop.

I kept the splash of colors to the header, and then used various tones of blues and greens for the colors used throughout the rest of the site design, including the footer and headings. Both blue and green give off the feeling of energy and youth. Rather than using white (which can be a little stark and not very warm) I went for a cream color. All in all, I think that this site is my best design yet. Because a designer’s web page should reflect on the best possible work, I put a lot of time, effort, and thought into how to make True Northe the mother ship of my design work.