The Devil’s in the Details

Part of what I hope to accomplish with this latest version of my site is to write more about my own personal process and inspirations for specific projects and designs.  My goal is to create content for this site that I myself would want to read.  I like to read about the creative process - therefore I will write about the creative process.

I have already written about the design for MG Commercial Real Estate on their individual project page in my portfolio, but I will go over the relevant points again here.

At the time that this redesign project was started, the client’s site was predominantly red and white with body copy written in black.  The desired look and feel for the new design was something ‘upscale’ and ‘classy’.  Looking at their existing color palette, I decided to keep it the same, but alter the use of the colors in the palette and use black (and deep grays) as the primary color for the design instead of red, which would be dramatically scaled back and used only for links and emphasis.  White would be used for the main content space and for any copy that was to be set against a black background (like the navigation).

These color choices were, in large part, inspired by a comic book where I had seen them used to great effect, Dark Horse Comics’ ‘Grendel: Black, White and Red’ (along with the follow up series, ‘Grendel: Red, White and Black’).

This series is presented solely in black and white with red used sparingly to emphasize specific elements on a page.  For instance, one story (both series are four issues each and each issue is made up of a number of short stories) revolves around a hit man.  The entire story is laid out in black and white except for the hit man’s gloves, which are always colored bright red, drawing attention on every page to that character’s lethal hands (you can see a few of the panels from that story to the right).

The way that these comics are able to draw your attention to specific areas of the page and the overall tone that they are able to establish was something I had found very interesting when I had first red the book some time ago.  Once I had decided on my black, white and red color scheme for this project, I was reminded of these books and subsequently dove into one of my comic long boxes to pull them out.  I actually even kept a few copies of the comic on hand for reference and inspiration as I began sketching out my initial design concepts for this project.

While I was ultimately able to stay fairly true to my original vision for this design, I did have to make a few concessions on the final version of the site.  Originally, I intended the only ‘full color’ pieces to be the property photos, giving them an enhanced sense of importance by alienating them, color wise, from the rest of the design.  For the most part, this ‘no-color’ approach was carried throughout the site, but I was asked to use color images for partner logos (on the ‘Who We Are’ page) and client logos (on the ‘Clients & Successes’ page).  Additionally, because this site uses a third party provider to power their listings (including the ‘Quick Search’ form on the home page which needed to be executed by adding an iFrame to the page), I only had a certain amount of control over how those listings were presented on the site.

See the final product of my black, white and red experiment at www.mgcommercial.com or learn more about the comics by reading the relevant Wikipedia page on Grendel.

Note: The title of this post, ‘The Devil’s in the Details’, is another Grendel tribute.  Most of the Grendel short stories have the word ‘devil’ in the title – including the original Hunter Rose/Grendel story, ‘Devil by the Deed’ and other later stories such as ‘Devil’s Legacy’, ‘Devil’s Reign’, ‘Four Devils, One Hell’ etc.