Google Webfonts

I'm going to use the Google Webfonts service to use custom typography on my website design for the surveyor brief. The service lets you embed fonts from a huge catalogue into your css code, allowing you to use fonts that aren't usually available by default.

Since the service is free a lot of the fonts are of poor quality, but I found an excellent article titled 'Google Webfonts that Don't Suck' on Sacha Greif's blog that talks about some of the better ones the offer:




Here are some of the fonts I found on the service that could be used on my surveyor website:











Surveyor - Website Research

I have been looking at a lot of existing website for handymen/surveyors and also some good examples of well structured websites. Here is a document, this first half being relevant to the subject of my project and the second showing websites that have excellent structural designs, something I want to incorporate into my own web design.

Sputnik8: Windows UI Concept




This is doing the rounds on design blog at the moment and quite rightly so! I think it's a vast improvement on the current Window's UI but keeps to a traditional 'window-based' desktop experience. 

The latest official designs coming from Microsoft for Windows 8 has radically changed to a 'titled' experience design to fit in with their mobile UI, something that I don't quite agree with since they are very different interactive experiences. Here is a Windows 8 video released last year by Microsoft:



I very much prefer Sputnik8's direction with his Windows concept, there is more information about his designs over on The Verge's forum and there is plenty of interesting feedback from the community too. I have tagged this under my surveyor brief because portions of the aesthetic and use of whitespace is something I'd like to implement in my website design for the client.

Logology 2

Here are some logos that I found in the book Logology 2 that I think will be good inspiration for my Handyman Surveyor logo ideas.

The first few images are about a brand identity across a range of media and the rest are examples of logos that I feel have a good aesthetic qualities and some that also communicate an idea of structure or building.



I especially like this logo created for an architecture company by Paperjam.



Thanks to Sarah for her awesome book-lending skills!

Gridr Buildrrr

Gridr Buildrrr is a web app that lets users generate grids by changing lots of different variables. It could help save time when creating future layout designs.

Website Inspiration

Here are two web design inspiration sites that showcase lots of different designs and themes. They will be useful for finding inspiration for my future web design briefs:

Site Inspire


Website Inspiration

Here are a couple of website designs that I initially think have the kind of aesthetic properties my surveyor website could work with:

Calepino is a great looking site with a bold structural feel. The different components looks like building blocks that are stacked together. I also like the muted colours used that make the photographs stand out.

Superiest is another good-looking site with a strong structural feel, I especially like the top four-part summary of the sections and way the photos have been aligned together.

Article: Making of Sharypic

An great article about Sharypic from Sacha Greif talks through the homepage design decisions and how the site evolved over time.

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