Working toward navigation
Spent some time thinking about the nav area. One example of art direction over time. I’m making decisions about this thing now because I need to now. Later I may iterate some more and change things, but I need something to start with.
Iteration 1:
I started by thinking the nav could be a spot for some kind of chunky visual. So I made a button bar. No good. It was distracting in the same way those sidebar images were, and (although I intend to refine everything initially throwing it together) it was ugly. Hover state on the right there, in green. I tried a variety of subtle differences in color, roundedness, gaps/borders. Just didn’t feel right.
Iteration 2:
So then I thought, what’s the absolute minimum I need to do? Change the color on hover. Easy. Lots of folks do this to really nice effect. But I wanted more structure here. I made the text all-caps, but that wasn’t enough so I added the really subtle borders. I liked it, but it didn’t feel finished.
Iteration 3:
Until now I had been using all-caps Scala Sans for the nav text, but I swapped in Cronos and it made a big difference. Cronos is turning into the typeface I use for sort of a relaxed emphasis, all over this site. I added very light gray box shadows above and below the border, and that also made a big difference I think.
