Website C&C

Russinating · 29 Nov 2010 at 14:11

I'm designing/deving a website for a local magazine - for free, in return for free ads/editorials etc. The director is in my colleague's networking chapter so in terms of getting our worth back I have no worries.

Anyway, the brief was fairly simple: they wanted it to look like the cover of their magazine and they wanted it up and running asap. I had that meeting on Thursday afternoon and I would've had the site completed Friday lunchtime had there been no delays with receiving images/logos etc.

Anyway, this is the magazine cover for reference:

They wanted the cover image to change every month, but the bubble and yellow-strips content to be static.

Here's the first draft of the site: http://cliftontimes.jonesmillbank.com. I haven't received any feedback from the client yet but would be good to hear what you guys think too or if you have any suggestions/spot any problems etc.

PS. Yes I know the style.css needs cleaning up (classes deleting from the default WP theme that are no longer in use), just haven't got round to it yet

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Dracata · 29 Nov 2010 at 14:41

Looking good if you're trying to stay true to the magazine design.

I'm not sure the Subject description font face/size works, in the bubble e.g. "What's happening in your local area".

Perhaps larger, or a different font. You could use a font directory service to use a custom font, perhaps.

Russinating · 29 Nov 2010 at 14:56

Custom fonts is one thing I have no experience in. Mind linking me to a tutorial/giving me a quick walkthrough? Would be great if I could use a font similar to the one they're using for the bubble.

Russinating · 29 Nov 2010 at 15:54

Nevermind, figured it out

. Thoughts?

Josh-HL · 3 Dec 2010 at 01:18

The design works well, if you'd seen the magazine before, you'd know you were at the right website straight away.

Seems to be quite a few different fonts going on?

The thing with custom fonts is that their not considered web-safe unless they are just static text, which its not in that speach bubble. That font might not show up on some computers, dont know whether you have taken that into consideration and put in the css what the next default font would be if they viewer cant view your custom font?

Looking good though. Nice job.

Russinating · 3 Dec 2010 at 09:37

There's four fonts:
- Georgia for the navigation and all other serif areas
- Neuton (Google Font Library) for page headings (h2)
- Reenie Beenie (Google Font Library) for the hand-written style font (h1)
- Helvetica for the body/everything else

All are backed up by alternative fonts all the way back to serif/sans-serif. They use more than four fonts for the magazine so in terms of reducing them whilst matching their style I'm not sure what can be done.

You've reminded me of a question I have re: the custom fonts though. I have used a backup font, as per normal, but there's a problem. The other text controls (line-height, text-spacing, etc) are all very font-specific, ie they've been set as so to best match the magazines font. This is especially true of the handwritten style font, Reenie Beenie. How do I reset these values to their default should it fall back to the next font?