Issue number 5 of the Design.blog is now live along with the cover page that I designed, and I thought I’d share my rationale behind the design choices I made. This is what we’re all really interested in, right? The finished product is always fun to explore and critique, but why the designer made the choice they did, at least for me, is fascinating.
This week’s cover design has a few thoughts behind it that both show a bit of my personal culture, and influence meshed with current anticipation design practices.
The first is a representation of my culture. Being Russian, I’ve always been infatuated with Soviet propaganda which lead to a love of classified documentation. The red against the white is reminiscent of the ‘Soviet’ era, but rather than steering toward propaganda patterns, I felt the idea of old documentation was a better direction and chose a monospace font to help engender that feeling.
The second piece about this design is the redacted lines of text. While they portray something classified, they also reflect the anticipation design practices of today. When pages are loading content in Calypso (WordPress.com interface) and/or Facebook, these pages often show blocks in place of text alluding that something is coming. Just take a look at some of my wireframes to get an idea of what I’m talking about.
In a HUGE way, this cover page (and most homepages of websites) is exactly that. It’s the page that alludes to something more. It encourages the adventure further into the details. And who doesn’t want to explore something classified?
The combination of both choices, I believe, make for a great blend of anticipation and peaked interest into something further.