Meticulous Design: Dramatic Headlines
May 14th, 2008 :: by Vivien
It’s been awhile since I shared with you my ideas for the re-design of Inspiration Bit. Unfortunately, the makeover had to be pushed on a back burner due to many other obligations and lack of time. However, since starting from last week I went solo and building my own business, I definitely need to make my blog’s re-design a priority. So I’m back to the “drawing board”, searching for more sources of inspiration on meticulous design details.
With this post I’m starting from the area of a blog that’s often left ignored — headline, date, author data and number of comments. Take a look at the 16 exquisitely crafted headlines below. It’s obvious that the designers have put lots of thought and payed a very close attention in getting them to perfectly fit the design and add a distinct character to the site’s look and feel.
I called them “dramatic” because some of them indeed appear rather theatrical though not being too showy, others seem to be emerging from antique pages of books or magazines, while others simply manifest themselves with a bold statement without the use of Impact.
1. BEARSKINRUG
Talented illustrator and designer Kevin Cornell most probably loves theatre, just check out his Shakespearean comic and, of course, the site’s design that looks more like a washed out old poster where every little detail was carefully thought out.
I also really like the way he displays the site comments in the adjacent to the post column.
Both the post’s heading and the date are using Georgia, although the title is displayed in a much larger (font-size: 160%) size and italicized. With just a little touch like adding an “elaborate” divider as a background image to the paragraph with the date, he makes it stand out among regular looking headlines on other blogs. Add to that a special treatment for links to previous and next posts: first, Kevin is not displaying those post titles, second, because of that he can safely replace the text with image links that glow on mouse hover (note that he’s still keeping the text link alternatives by moving them outside the windows area: text-indent:-9999px;).
2. VIGET-INSPIRE
First of all, I hope that designers from Viget Labs will one day write a tutorial on how they achieved such perfect watercolour drawings for their site. They continued with the watercolour theme and even “washed out” the pictures of the authors.
The author’s name, along with the categories, cleverly listed as “on the topic of…”, are displayed in 0.85 em all caps Georgia with letter-spacing: 3px, and look very different from the post’s title that uses the same Georgia face, though sized as 1.8 em. The date and the number of comments are displayed in Verdana.
The gentle lines underneath the title, authors and dates section actually all come from a single image, that’s called from the DIV after the title’s H2 tag, but raised with a negative margin so that the title too shows up above the understated dividers of the background.
3. DESIGN*SPONGE
If for some reason you haven’t visited this site yet, please, do yourself a favour and spend at least 15 minutes there. I guarantee you’ll get hooked with those DIY projects, sneak peaks at other people’s room decors, before & after transformations, and so much more.
A rather interesting approach on using HTML tables for building the structural carcass of the site, and only then going with DIV tags for further details. Once again we see one attractive background image underneath the category/date/title/ sections. An interesting detail is that there are eight different background images (as far as I could deduct) that alternate (according to an unknown to me formula). Everything is displayed in Georgia, but in different sizes and styling — uppercase for the categories, but lowercase and italic for the larger titles.
4. KHMERANG
Thankfully, Mr. Khmerang has written a tutorial on how he achieved that worn type for the headlines. Rather than using sIFR where Flash is replacing the text, the text stays untouched but is “covered” with a worn image.
5. TYPESITES
Typesites is a new blog (launched in January, 2008 by Kyle Meyer) that offers a “weekly showcase of websites with interesting typographic design”. I’ve discovered this site only a couple of weeks ago, after my own “investigations” on sites with exquisite web typography. Kyle used Helvetica Bold for the headlines and Helvetica Neue in a much smaller size for all the byline details like the date, author’s name and the number of comments. He achieved a very dramatic effect by displaying them on an almost black background (#181818), with the text set either in white or bright yellow (#FFD200) — so simple, yet so effective.
6. I LOVE TYPOGRAPHY
Of course, it is expected to see type magic in action on a site that belongs to none other but Mr. Typography himself. Aside from the outstanding content, John’s superb eye on typography and focus on details cannot leave us disappointed. The post’s title is set in large Georgia, while a clever addition of a byline, à la 2nd title, set in Lucida Grande with an elegant branch divider in the background image, makes the articles look designed more for a book than a site.
The date treatment is very simple, yet attractive with the bigger number in red (#CC0000) and so perfectly aligned with the comments are. The trick used to display the comments is quite ingenious — the raised numbers with the opening curly brace are set inside the SUPerscript, the closing curly brace is displayed in a big size, while the word ‘comments’ inherits the parent style:
<span class="bigdate"><sup> {74</sup></span>
comments <span class=”bigdate”>}</span>
7. GROW COLLECTIVE
Grow Collective was designed by Jon Tan, whose personal site was featured in my series on going behind the scenes of exquisite Web typography. So it’s not surprising to see beautiful type treatment on Jon’s company site.
Everything is set with lots of breathing room that makes the beginning of every article very open and inviting. The title is set in Georgia, in a rich coffee colour (#331100), the summary below is displayed in italicized grey (#999999) Georgia. The rest of the auxiliary data (author’s name, comments, categories, tags) is set in small Verdana.
8. A LIST APART
I’ve already dissected this stunningly designed site in my behind the scenes of web typography series, so I won’t be repeating myself on how to achieve the headline effects of A List Apart, but I just couldn’t omit listing this site here as well.
9. BLISSFULLY AWARE
Designed by Joshua Lane, this site looks more like a menu of a high-end restaurant, so the use of decorative elements fits the style very well. All text in the post header is displayed using Georgia, and is distinguished with the use of different sizes and styles. An interesting detail here is that to achieve the pale, fading text effect Joshua is using CSS property opacity rather than picking a pale font colour. For the previous/next entry links he specified text colour to be white, but with opacity:0.25, however the entry’s byline (with the author, date and comments) is not using the opacity feature anymore, it’s set with colour: #E6D9BF.
10. ROB WEYCHERT
As Rob Weychert himself confessed, the design of this site was inspired by his love of “the densely ornate editorial layouts from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries”. Despite relying on only one font, Georgia, Rob’s use of different colours (#000033 for the title and #993333 for the date), styles (all caps vs. normal), sizes and an unusual alignment (the date is set with a specified width and floated to the left, allowing the content to wrap around it), made the header section of the posts highly attractive. When you mouse over the prev/next links, the title of the linked posts will popup, so you can see what they link to.
11. CAMERON MOLL
If you rather go with something simple, you would appreciate a classic look of Cameron Moll’s style. Add a decorative divider above the title, stick to Georgia, use letter spacing to control the look (letter-spacing:-1px; was used for the headline) and add special characters before/after the date. One thing I’m missing in Cameron’s headline treatment is the absence of a link — I have to scroll all the way down to find the permalink or click to read the comments.
12. MATT NORTHAM
Matt is playing with two fonts — Times and Verdana — to style the post’s header. The decorative swooshes before and after the date are separate images. The date text itself is set with letter-spacing:0.33em, all caps Verdana in bold. The headline is displayed in a bold big lowercased Times. All the additional meta data once again is set in Verdana.
13. COUDAL PARTNERS
Even though Coudal Partners is not a blog, the way Coudal has styled the headlines can be easily adopted for blogs. The difference in sizes between the two titles is striking. Interestingly enough, H4 was used for the large headlines, while H1 is used for the smaller additional title, displayed in Gill Sans. I also liked the use of two colours in the top title.
14. LADY OMEGA
Can you find a more dramatic site than this one? To achieve a similar effect on your blog you should set the title in Georgia, in dark pink (#EA3690) on a black background, add some cute icons before/after all the auxiliary data below the post, float the date to left and style it as you like.
15. WEB DESIGNER WALL
Even though it’s a very popular site and most of you frequently visit it, I had to feature it here as well. A simple watercolour brush stroke in the background makes the header look artsy, and the comments cloud only adds the magic feel to the site.
16. SHAUN INMAN
It is impossible to talk about the type treatment for headlines and skip sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) technique. And what a better site to show as an example than Shaun Inman’s (the originator of sIFR) own blog. Shaun uses Univers 59 Ultra Condensed typeface in the Flash replacement, with a striking alteration in colours for the words in headlines. I’m not too crazy about the disappearing headlines on mouse over, but I do like the minimal modern look of the site.
Hope you found those examples inspiring. What other sites would you add to this list of dramatic headlines?
