Introducing Colophon / August 23, 2004 / 17:49

It has happened finally. Ideas at id-as.com are now available in both languages: English and Russian. There's also a new Enghlish-speaking section here: Colophon. Which serves as a short guide into whos, whats, whys and whens as far as this site is concerned.

The essential portfolio section will pretty soon appear in the top-right-hand menu which currently contains only two items.

Meanwhile if you happen to hate reading uncapitalized body text which exists here by default, try getting some conventional typography. Just choose the alternative style called “Text with capitals” and enjoy the acquired legibility.

The IE users shouldn't try to find the alternative style option in their browser—such thing hasn't been invented by Microsoft developers yet. The IE users should go directly to Browse Happy and try to make their own life easier, safer and more comfortable.

Fluid & Fixed / August 20, 2004 / 23:59

In spite of the argument we all witness today, there'll be no confrontation between fluid and fixed in this entry. You may easily identify personal preferences of this site's author, that's true. But for me there's no sense in painting the world only black or only white.

“It depends”, they say. Can't agree more. Two examples of my recent work below illustrate that.

I've been working on two different projects the last two months. One of them is “corporate”, while another seems to be more “unrestricted”. In terms of pixel-perfect elements positioning, that is.

The comps were created in Photoshop with a little help from Illustrator. Bearing solid understanding in mind that I'll have to deal only with CSS-positioning when it'll come to coding. No table tags and shit like that :)

Fixed for corporate

When it comes to corporate branding on the web you don't have this nice creative freedom at your disposal. At least as far as the layout grid is concerned. The comps below represent the grid developed for a series of sites for my current employer.

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Fluid for arty

The layout below is supposed to be based on the negative margins technique brilliantly depicted by Ryan Brill in his “Creating Liquid Layouts with Negative Margins” article. The center column will accommodate the monitor resolution while the side columns will be fixed-width.

I do understand that the design will fall apart at 1600x1200 (the balance between the major graphic masses will be simply broken), but the target audience will hardly have that big monitors, anyways. Besides I'm going to play with percentage unit to get the readable line length for the body text.

Oh. I've forgotten to tell you that these are the comps for a big Moscow art-dolls gallery site. And the drafts are still being worked on.

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Make both not one

I'm not sure whether I've managed to make the point that we don't have to stick to any of the approaches in question. Both have every right to be used. It only depends on the peculiarities of the clients' business. And your ability to deal with the challenges of the fluid designs.

Finally. I had already made most of the above mentioned drafts when ran across an article at Cameron Moll's site. Guess what? I used two out of the five tendencies he predicted: the first and the fourth ones. Funny, or what?

Earlier @id-as.com

Designin' Outside The Box

My current web-design projects may end up as liquid layouts. At least I'd love them to.

(Just Like) Starting Over

The overall result of the long and winding month of silence here. The beginning of the cleanup time.

The Times They’re A-Changin’

This space goes bilingual? The whys and whens of the idea…

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