Latest Blog Posts

Designing: Complexity vs. Simplicity

When I’m designing a layout, I usually start with a color palette and play around with it until I pick what colors should be dominant, what should be subtle, or what should be used sparingly. Lately I have been really into bright, poppy layouts. So I start to create something and build and build until things start to looked united. I add twists here and there and account for playful scripts for the users to interact with.

But…

Then I wonder if what I am doing is overkill. There is so much noise in public media – TV, radio, and websites – all trying to compete with each other in trying to be the most visually appealing and innovative. In come grunge layouts, textured layouts and desk top layouts. Everything looks like the rest, you know?

Then, once in a while I will come across a beautifully done layout that stands out to me. They are simple, grid-based layouts that use colors sparingly (or sometimes only stick to black and white.) It is like seeing a person who is effortlessly beautiful – of course there is work involved, but the end result seems so natural that it’s hard not to believe they were born that way.

I think I will make it a personal goal to make sure that whenever I feel things are getting complicated, to start over from scratch and go bare bones on the layout, adding only what I need and throwing out anything noisy. Kind of like a spring cleaning for the designer’s mind.

Musical Inspiration for Pixelfox

It being January and snowy and giving an overall feeling of blah, it was hard to make this layout fresh and colorful-looking. There is an endless vast of design inspiration online, but listening to music somehow gives inspiration a tangible quality. (Does that make sense!?) In any case, I pretty much had these albums on repeat while working on the site.

• Yelle - Pop-up
• TV on the Radio - Dear Science
• Keane - Perfect Symmetry
• the Killers - Day & Age

It’s kind of a strange mix but it worked for me. Each of the albums remind me of orange colors with the exception of Keane’s, which reminded me of blue.

Pixelfox Official Launch

It took a while and a few (read: many!) layout revisions and do-overs, but Pixelfox is finally up. Somehow it is infinitely easier to design for anybody else other myself. But I have to say that without the help of Roy this site wouldn’t look the way it does now. I tried to create a simple layout with clean colors and graphics. I am pretty happy with result although I know I won’t be able to stop myself from tweaking here and there in the future.