A Clean New Direction for American Spectator
Posted by Matt on November 26, 2008
Spectator.org is the newest addition to the list of sites we’ve designed and built.
Since The American Spectator has been around for 1967, keeping the established identity was an important part of the design process. We retained their look by re-using the existing color palette and by keeping the established logo simple in a basic white on red header. Further distributing the red, we threw it into the date-bars, content category headings, third column headings, and buttons. Using the black in the large featured post area serves as the focal point, drawing the eye with an over-sized image and further distributing color. We continued this with the bold black post headings and the background for the active state of the nav list in the right column.
We were also tasked with keeping a good chunk of the content available on the main page without a ton of scrolling. To accomplish this, we kept the spacing between posts on the homepage to a minimum. This expands of course when you click through to read the full article. To create visual separation of content, we used thin borders on the bottom of each post and kept the article headings big compared to the accompanying text.
Along with the re-design, this site has been built on a newly built backend framework which allows for much greater content control by the editors. Additions to the backend are super simple now as well, so any client changes/requests can be managed quickly and efficiently.
