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Christopher Bloom edited this page Jan 20, 2016 · 54 revisions

We're looking for something light, clean, and responsive. This site will use Foundation 5 as a base, so that should inform the process. I am trying to avoid designs where the illustration is the main form of beauty (for instance), since it's a community site and we won't have a lot of day-to-day design.

[ ! ] denotes the top picks/finalists in each section.

Inspiration

Best WoW Guild Sites

  1. [ ! ] Paragon does guild sites perfectly (icons, tiers, media): http://www.paragon.fi/media
  2. [ ! ] Manaflask, does Ensidia: http://manaflask.com/en/
  3. Method Guild: http://www.methodwow.com/
  4. Blood Legion guild: http://www.bloodlegion.com/ (check out that "needs" widget)

WoW Specific

  1. [ 1 ] For more texture, wowwiki does incredibly well: http://www.wowwiki.com/WoWWiki:WoW_Icons/Icon_List/Images, http://www.wowwiki.com/Expansion
  2. WoWInsider: notice the way they use the context images for stuff. gives it that "texture". http://wow.joystiq.com/
  3. MacroWoW has good texture and wow-feel: http://macro-wow.com/
  4. Pull instance graphics from the armory

Forum design

  1. Honestly, treehouse community is best: https://teamtreehouse.com/community. Our forum should be a single stream (like threehouse community and Discourse) where all posts run inline tagged well. No need for sub forums, people don't hunt through those anyway. Will also help surface a lot more activity. Similar font: https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Varela+Round
  2. Discourse-style: http://try.discourse.org/
  3. Ars Technica style: http://arstechnica.com/civis/index.php
  4. Look into ThemeForest: http://themeforest.net/item/youplay-gaming-wordpress-template/full_screen_preview/11959042

Content and media design

  1. Mashable wins. Basically do mashable.
  2. http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2014/04/how-to-beat-the-paradox-of-choice-in-ui-design/
  3. Smashing. http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/04/01/freebie-flat-icon-set-60-icons-png-svg-eps-psd-ai/
  4. Vice does this well:http://motherboard.vice.com/read/uncontacted-tribes-die-instantly-after-we-meet-them?trk_source=popular

Overall Design

  1. Use this palette/flat design: https://getgrav.org/
  2. Colors: http://codepen.io/JonasB/pen/PwWXqg, http://codepen.io/colewaldrip/pen/bdZVGd
  3. https://apiary.io/
  4. http://benmildren.com/projects/flat-ui-colors/index.html
  5. Treehouse is best: https://teamtreehouse.com/forum
  6. DIY has perfect whitespace and illustration: https://diy.org/skills/rocketeer
  7. Zurb pretty much nails dense content: http://foundation.zurb.com/docs/index.html
  8. Scotch.io: http://scotch.io/bar-talk
  9. Dribble: Dribble has to show a lot of content, plus it uses the "light on top of texture" that I love: http://dribbble.com/teams
  10. A case study of IMDB redesign is a great look at imagery and dense content: https://medium.com/p/2e9e865dd83
  11. Treehouse's flat iconography
  12. The way Gravitate does their header and front page: http://www.gravitatedesign.com/
  13. raid hub: http://www.gravitatedesign.com/work/
  14. ReadWrite: huge amounts of content, whitespace. http://readwrite.com/
  15. Fireshell, light, content, love that header style: http://getfireshell.com/
  16. Forefather's group for responsive and texture: http://forefathersgroup.com/
  17. 45Royale, not as good after the redesign, but still clean: http://45royale.com/
  18. Huge list: http://bashooka.com/inspiration/flat-web-ui-design/
  19. paper.li, handles typography and whitespace well: http://paper.li/neutralthoughts/1353674004
  20. Peacock, light design: http://peacock.st/
  21. This fucking insanity: http://std.li/pastel/home.html#home
  22. Black Pixel: http://blackpixel.com
  23. Kaleidoscope app: http://kaleidoscopeapp.com
  24. Thinkshout's whitespace with semi-contained "sidebar": http://thinkshout.com/blog/2012/01/lev/entity-registrations
  25. A really good font, and really good design elements. http://designmodo.com/flat-free/
  26. If we want to go the "hexagon" route: http://blog.ansacopeland.com/chatter/2013/3/25/hover-friendly-hexagons
  27. I really like the way this header behaves (as well as the whitespace): http://singlebrook.com/blog/creating-custom-beans-in-drupal-part-1
  28. http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/ - a lot of content, whitespace, light color but with great design.
  29. Flat UI: http://designmodo.github.io/Flat-UI/, PRO: http://designmodo.com/flat/
  30. Mashable has the perfect layout: http://mashable.com/2013/05/31/bill-nye-qa/?cid=Mash-Product-RSS-Pheedo-All-Partial
  31. More really good layout/design from ink: http://ink.sapo.pt/
  32. Great flat, content-focused layout: http://listverse.com/2013/01/03/10-deadliest-world-events-in-human-history/
  33. Font we should totally use: http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/source-sans-pro
  34. I really like the Lato font used body text here: http://thomashunter.name/blog/the-javascript-event-loop-presentation/
  35. clearinghouse of great design: http://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/inspiration/40-innovative-ui-concepts-dribbble
  36. d3js.org - Amazing hexagon header.
  37. https://variancecharts.com/index.html, great offwhite color, typography, minimalism

Fonts

  1. Raleway + Lato: http://haptime.in/
  2. OpenSans
  3. Museo Slab
  4. League Gothic + Proxima Nova: http://ifontyou.com/combos/40
  5. Font combinations: futura/museoslab - http://ifontyou.com/combos/79

Color Palletes

  1. http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/1930/cheer_up_emo_kid

Resources

  1. Blurred backgrounds: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7k21t6kh9b3wgd0/TCr7oqp9lC
  2. HUGE pile of game resources: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/758437-Huge-Collection-of-WoW-Icons-Interface-Elements-Loading-Screens-etc!
  3. Guild tabard: Clean PNG, Back. Front. (View "raw" for full resolution)
  4. Iconic icons: Chris has a full, paid subscription to this, use them!
  5. Full list of WoW icons. Would like to see these used heavily throughout the site, taxonomy, fields, etc
  6. As part of the "expansion" feature (essentially time-based taxonomy), we'll need to use the expansion logos (also using context here): http://www.wowwiki.com/Expansion
  7. GRADIENTZ!! http://css3ps.com/

Specific features

  1. Downfall history timeline: http://tympanus.net/codrops/2013/05/02/vertical-timeline/
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