Creating Weekly Scholar
When I design websites, I usually go for simplistic clean business layouts. However, there is always an exception to the rule. Weekly Scholar is one of those exceptions.
Johnny Koch is a man who has a lot of hard earned wisdom. He entrusted me to build him a website that would help make his readers feel comfortable, but retain a sense of authority on his subject matter. He wanted something that was different from the rest of religious writers. There are a lot of authors in the field that Johnny writes on, so the web design challenge was set high.
I sent Johnny various designs that I came up with, he liked most of my designs but nothing really captured his heart. So I continued my efforts to completely satisfy his heart and to design a fantastic website.
Finally I created a scroll graphic and displayed it from the top of one of my designs. I put a label on it that read: “Weekly Scholar” and I had an excerpt from one of his articles. He instantly loved the idea of Weekly Scholar to be his web site name. Now I had a theme name to go with and an idea of what he wanted.
Web Design: Parchment Paper
Now that I had ideas, I was able to come up with a color palette of soft browns, tans, and parchment colors. Next I created a few different graphics that are really key to the websites appeal.
The first was the parchment paper. I took a tan rectangle and burned the edges with some imaging software, cut it up a bit and make it look like it was aged. The center had to remain untouched for readability.
Web Design: Tree and Logo
Next I went for a well known font, Papyrus. It is used often to represent artistic, historic, old type faces. I decided the logo header needed something, so I created a little simple tree with some basic lines and a brush. It still needed more so I added the falling leaves down the side of the scroll. These changes unbalanced the right side of the logo, so I added a little dove with an olive branch and some text under the tree. I think the header really sets the site off when you first find Weekly Scholar.
Web Design: Navigation & Next Week Scroll
Navigation was added to allow readers a simply way around the website. The colors were a bit brighter to off set the dark browns and tans that I have used so far. This allowed the navigation to pop out for the readers.
Also added a next week scroll so that readers could get a glimpse of the upcoming articles subject.
Web Design: Making it beautiful
So far the website was looking great, and the design was very solid. However it needed something extra. After a few minutes I realized it needed some light, it was too dark. I added a simple glowing effect from behind the scroll that is very faint, however it adds a huge impact on the website’s design.
Summary:
All together the Weekly Scholar is very clean and clear. The navigation is simple and the sidebar list other options that the readers might want to view. Johnny is very satisfied with his website and constantly gets positive reviews from his visitors. I couldn’t be more pleased with the design too. It is very functional and readable, which is the main goal in all of my designs.
Clean, Powerful & User Friendly.
If your interested in more information, feel free to contact me. I build and design high quality websites in the North Georgia area.