OEP Web Dev - Art(ist) that inspires

Right, I'm not so into painted art, although some examples that bend the definition are, I must admit, interesting. I am more into photography, and one guy who I find captures our modern world with great humour, is Matt Stuart. He has a really good eye for picking out background detail and then turning the entire photo from something quite ordinary, to something quite funny. It is sort of like what Harry Hill does on TV Burp. Admittedly, there are some photos where I don't get it, but most of the time, it can be right under your nose!

We were asked to find an element of that artists' site that we liked. Matt Stuart doesn't really have that much out of the ordinary going on in his site, the only stand out thing I could notice was that repeated typewriter effect for the title which appears on every page.

Sooo, I set off looking at some other cool photographers. Carl Warner being one. He makes 'sets' for his images out of food, fusing real time images with loafs of bread, and so on! It has that fairytale, Hansel & Gretal feel to it. The element that I particularly liked out of the whole site (and you'll probably think I'm being OTT) is the loading bar. Blink and you might miss it. But the size and minimalism about it is what I really like. It is so simple, being about one pixel wide, but it has a very futuristic feel. The effect on the eye whilst it loads I think makes it as well - it's sleekness.

You get a whole variety of loaders nowadays, whether it be the blue Apple bar, the green Windows bar, or a motion clip revolving circle.



But this simple 1 pixel line, I think, still has a place amongst them. The only downside I can see is that you can't really associate any connection with the brand, for example, the green blocky loader people would know is Windows, possibly even narrowing down to XP.

Another thing I noticed about Warner's site is the colour co-ordination he employs for the main menu section options. It makes it more themeatic by including the specified colour scheme. You want Locations, which he has chosen as yellow, and when you click through, the outlines of the images, along with the text are yellow too. I've learnt that this is a technique often used in web design, to familiarise content with the user. What I would comment on though is that the chosen colours don't necessarily correspond with their content: purple... for people?

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