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And All That Malarkey
Current rating: 5.7 (489 votes)
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- Added: 12 May 2005
- Designer: Andy Clarke
- Submitter: Daniel Oliver
Review:
Ok, several reasons for including this one (the fact that Andy Clarke is a fellow Brit is not one of them, dear cynics).
Reason one: it's getting submitted to Stylegala heavily. Reason two: Surprisingly, the first incarnation of this site is nowhere to be found in the gallery. Reason three/four/five etc: This new version has a very refreshing magazine layout, bold yet sensible use of colour, with a heavily-researched design truly reflecting the author's philosophies and interests. It's incredibly striking, fresh, well-authored and (I hope you'll agree) this year's most successful redesign so far.
There are caveats. Although inspired by the source material that influences this design, the use of Impact for the headers has caused cross-platform font-rendering woes for some viewers, and for me the general mixture of typefaces does jar on certain pages. I also doubt that the magazine layout will be everyones cup of tea. I'll say this though, I found myself flicking through the site as though it were a mag, and for a good half hour. Andy's hiding a lot of content in there.
Perhaps the biggest talking point is the monotone version that Andy is serving up for IE users. Compare the glorious full-colour in Firefox or Safari with the black and white of the IE version. How do we feel about a section of the audience being marginalised in this way, or does it make them special?
Many aspects set this design apart. Using article id numbers as visible references is something I've not seen before - folks are usually hell-bent on hiding those. Everywhere you look, ephemera from Andy's record, scooter or badge collections is visible, and there are discussing the collation of "scraplets" prior to any building work.
On the markup front, it's as sweet as you'd hope. Andy makes heavy use of his favoured definition lists to achieve suggestions of print layout. Check out the source code, and you'll be amazed at the low div count in the main content areas. Instead, smart styling of headers, paragraphs and lists ensure that Andy keeps his site lean and easily redesigned in the future.
Look, I unashamedly love it. I did wait 24 hours to see if someone else would review it. Honest, guv.
Reviewed by Simon Collison
The Zen of CSS DesignThere are 14 guest comments so far.
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Andy, you rule!
the fact that Andy Clarke is a fellow Brit is not one of them, dear cynics
Hey Colly, it's not your fault there are so many talented Brits out there... whatcha gonna do!
It's a corker of a site, very groundbreaking layout and of coure becuase it's Andy it get's ten points! :)
The monotone IE-only version has actually been quite well-recieved in this office, with people preferring it to the colour version. I think it's both a technical and a design achievement, but I'm not sure if serving a fully-functional and attractive design to IE users is perhaps the best way of demonstrating to them that they're using a duff browser...
I was wondering at first why I saw colour in the screenshot but when I ran it in IE (b/c I was using a computer at school and they don't have firefox) I saw a slightly different version. Then when I reached home and saw the coloured version I was just wowed.
Awesome work by Andy. Simply Beautiful.
Great job Andy, it's a joy to explore and a refreshing change from the usual blog layout.
Just awesome. A total inspiration. Not only a nice change from the usual blog layout, but a wonderful implementation of a three column semi-fluid layout.
Is it me, or are the domains mixed up between Malarkey and Stuff and Nonsense? stuffandnonsense.co.uk points to malarkey and malarkey.co.uk points to Stuff and Nonsense. I found that to be very strange. Other than that, I love the new design.
I dunno. I kinda liked his old one better.
While this layout is absolutely stunning on a system with anti-aliasing, it looks like complete crap on a system without it. I hate to see designers following this trend since, really, very few people actually have font-smoothing enabled or available on their machines.
I've yet to look at it on my new mac or at the uni to see what it looks like with Quartz, but I've to agree with Kyle that it looks a bit rough on my Win2k machine without ClearType. Still it doesn't look like crap! Very interesting layout, nice magazine style.
I have to agree with Kyle. When I first looked at this on my WinXP machine I was really bewildered by why people liked it: it looked extremely choppy, disorienting and altogether unprofessional. But I knew that this was Andy Clark, so I wondered. Lo and behold, when I checked it on a Mac at school, I found a beautiful and clever design. But unfortunately, unless I take the time to install something for my home computer, I won't be visiting Malarkey nearly as much.
Love 4:
- colors
- images
- style & charisma
- bw ie version :)
- almost everything else (see bellow)
No love 4:
- pattern in header arrows
- Impact headers... to big and bold so you just cant ignore error in kerning and are too "non smooth" or too blury like pixel font placed on half pixel in flash (with and without cleartype on win machines)
- main menu font (that particular little phat pixel font...). I belive that there is a better choice (even in pixel font families).
Cheers!
I want to say a huge thank-you for all the kind comments about my new design. They have been (almost) universally positive and that puts a really big smile on my face.
After a day of experimentation with both sIFR and image replacement, the site now has shiny, new, graphical Impact headers which I hope you will find less a strain on the eyes. After all, it's legibility which matters on a content based site and I hope that I've struck a reasonable compromise.
The IE Ska design uses plain text Impact, but at a size which appears to work on Windows PCs without ClearType running.
@ Chris Griffin: This should answer your question http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/underpants_over_my_trousers.html
Since I couldn't get the reply page to work for me on Andy's site, I guess I'll post these here. So, to Andy:
1. I love the IE version. (I'm a huge Specials nutcase so...yes. I like it very much.) Ever thought about giving those of us who abhor IE an option of viewing the nice black & white one without having to fire up the browser each time we head to your site?
2. The reply page, for some reason, does not like IE. It was doing strange things like doubling my letters as I typed (which I at first thought was some sort of anti-spam thing) and just other strange breakage. I still had this page open or I would have just opened up your page in Firefox and replied there.
3. My favorite thing about the site though is the little "to top" button at the bottom. That's so handy!
Nice job, sir!