Off to a Slow Start

My first entry in November comes on the 9th. How pathetic. Sorry, readers, and thanks for hanging tight while I waited for some inspiration to write. It still hasn’t come, but while I continue to wait, here are some notables:

¶ zlog redesigns. Again. Continuing with the simple look, it looks very nice (as always). I’ll be honest, though… the Google ads bother me a bit, especially their placement at the top of the page. It’s just that they detract attention from zlog’s great content, and make the site feel less… “bloggy.” Ah well, everyone’s got their motives. Looks good, zlog!

“Even in the all-too-oudated IE, the design renders beautifully…”

¶ This is cereal. This is also the most creative and innovative design that the Zen Garden has ever seen. The navigation resembles drop-down menus that, when hovered over, reveal gorgeous pop-up navigation lists. The design takes advanced CSS to the extreme by seamlessly combining images and HTML text in ways that boggle my mind, such as in the footer where it normally just reads “XHTML, CSS, CC, 508, and AAA.” Even in the all-too-oudated IE, the design renders beautifully, including a “your browser is too old to view this design correctly” message. Backing up this innovative use of CSS is an awesome design that incorporates superb photographs, graphics, and typography. A standing ovation for Shaun Inman!

¶ Sunny? Earth to Sunny! Perhaps all of those solar flares have left him with a sore stomach.

¶ Dave Shea and mezzoblue celebrate a year of blissful marriage. Congrats!

¶ “Redesign” has recently been on my mind. The fact that I don’t have a lot of spare time makes it easy to fight the temptation.

¶ A sidebar blog has also been on my mind. I’m still thinking about it.

¶ JeffCroft.com – what a looker!

¶ TypeWorkshop is very cool, especially Type-Basics. Makes you realize how beautiful an art typography really is.

And Growing…

As reported last Tuesday, the Zen Garden is continuing to grow. The two most recent designs are…

Entomology: Designed by the wonderful Jon Hicks, Entomology is a great tribute to both the flexibility of CSS and the beautiful creatures we all know as butterflies. Jon has made use of some pseudo CSS elements, so make sure you check out the design in Mozilla or Opera.

Hedges: One of the more unique designs at the Garden, Hedges, by Kev Mears, is a cute and simple design that adds another touch of character to the now thirty-one-design-wielding Garden.

The Garden is Growing

Three new entries have recently been added to the Zen Garden, which has continued to grow over the last couple months. The new entries are…

Gothica: Designed by Patrick Lauke, one of my coworkers at the SitePoint Forums, Gothica is a nicely laid out Gothic design with a grungy header graphic and clean navigation.

Atlantis: Kevin Davis’s dark design is reminiscent of being deep under the water in a lost city. I’m not completely impressed by the central graphic, and the layout isn’t anything to ogle over, but in the end, it is a nice addition to the Garden.

“Everthing is pleasing to the eye”

Backyard: Ray Henry’s design has proved to be one of my new favorites. Everthing is pleasing to the eye, including the interesting layout, the calming color scheme, and the use of typography. Great work!

With the Zen Garden about to hit thirty designs, I’m still hoping to get a design of my own on the list, sooner or later.

A Beaming “Zunflower”

Now that Dave Shea has returned from his wedding and honeymoon, which included travels to Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Vancouver, Seattle, Chicago, Providence, Boston, and New York City (phew!), I have been keeping a close eye on the Zen Garden, hoping that his return would mean a new design.

“The beautiful, yet simple, design portrays subtle innovation at its finest.”

Well, what do you know, it did! The newest edition to the ever-expanding Garden, entitled “Zunflower,” wowed me. Literally. The first thing I said when I saw it was, “wow!” The beautiful, yet simple, design portrays subtle innovation at its finest.

The three column layout is exaggerated and enhanced by soft drop shadows that make you feel as if you’re looking at a 3D presentation, and not just a 2D Web page. The edited sunflower image behind the logo is crisp and vibrant. It makes me wonder whether or not it began as a photograph of a real sunflower. In the end, Radu Darvas has provided the Garden with another astonishing design.

“The Comic Book” On Hold

A few days ago, while I again could not see my own site and, therefore, could not work on it, I decided to start on a design for the CSS Zen Garden. Ever since I had first seen the site, I knew that I eventually wanted to learn CSS positioning and submit a design, and I finally had some spare time to do so.

I opened up my “Inspiration” folder, where I keep all of my quickly drawn out ideas, and was immediately attracted to some design ideas that I had come up with using a font called BadaBoom. A few hours later, I had the design and stylesheet completed, titled it “The Comic Book,” and submitted it to Dave Shea.

I heard back from him yesterday, and he would like me to add a few things to jazz it up and make it look more like a comic book. I actually wasn’t upset because I rushed the process so much that there are still some aspects of the design that I would like to refine.

That said, be on the lookout over the next couple weeks to see if “The Comic Book” ever reaches the Zen Garden standards! Until then I’ve provided a small preview of it above.

Beauty Lies Beneath

Yet another fantastic design has been added to the css Zen Garden’s growing list. Created by Michael Pick, “What Lies Beneath” is definitely one of the most innovative designs that the Garden has seen yet. Michael took an unconventional approach, creating a horizontally, not vertically, long layout. The graphics are fabulous and really give the user the feeling of being underground. Another two thumbs up!

Behind the Story: Golden Mean

Douglas Bowman of stopdesign, and designer of the CSS Zen Garden’s fantastic new entry “Golden Mean“, explains the creation process in a new two-part series.

In the first article, he guides the reader through some of the “unique issues” that he came upon while creating the stylesheet for “Golden Mean”, including a complex background arrangement and double-element lists. The second article, which was published today, is entitled “In the Garden: A Design Process Revealed“. In it, Bowman takes you through the basic, yet very thorough, process that he used to reach the final design. I love that he included a few images that give the reader some good insight into the process, including ones of the sketches and thumbnails he drew up and his typography experimentation page.

The series is a great read, and I recommend that you read it if you find the time. Whether you’re a beginner or highly experienced, you’ll find something educational or interesting. Thanks for the fantastic walk-through, Douglas!

“Golden Mean” is, oh, so nice!

A new design has been added today to Dave Shea’s css Zen Garden. It’s called “Golden Mean” and it was created by Douglas Bowman of stopdesign.com. The graphics are fantastic, and by far some of the best out of all the entries. I especially like how different he was with his design, using images for “The Beauty of CSS Design” and “A demonstration…”, and setting off the section entitled “The Road to Enlightenment,” something which not many people have done. I give it two thumbs up!