Derek Powazek

I'm lovin this site. It's a very well done site - nice mix of a raw + clean look.

Wicked, worn is back.

I think it's all about the footer instead of the sidebar. Absolutely kick-ass. For those wondering more about the impetus of this site's design read .

Looking under the hood, perhaps the only complaint or, rather, question for the designer I have is: where are the heading tags? I mean, class="head"? From the looks of it, this gentleman is no amateur, so this comes as a bit of a surprise.

Heading tags - good point, Terry! How did I miss that? Oh well, so he'll do less well on Google, and annoy a few screen-reader users - it's still a great site. Must be to get away with that.

Holy!! It's Derek Powazek! Old school defined. I am astonished and super happy to see him back and new in style. He's the guy behind FRAY, of the same period as Lance Arthur, Alexis Massie, Greg Knauss, Magdalena Donea, Gregory Alkaitis-Carafelli, etc. A web pioneer. They were doing this stuff when I was in middle school!

*bows to Powazek* This is definitely a guy who deserves recognition.

Besides making me look like the worlds worst designer (not that difficult by the way), this site looks NICE. Love the use of the footer to free up the rest of the site, I think this could become the new trend - I might jump on the bandwagon before I'm too late again.

Great design. If I was to be picky, I would conplain about the extra divs at the bottom of the page (fineprinttop and fineprintbot) that are only there to give a fancy top and bottom border.

Thanks, y'all! All these designers looking at my CSS makes me feel like I'm in one of those dreams where you go to school and then realize you forgot to put clothes on. Stop staring! It's cold in here!

Anyway, yes, my CSS sucks. I use XHTML strict for work, so I let myself get sloppy at home. It's no excuse, I know. I'll get right on that, boss.

Again, thanks. I really appreciate the props.

And he speaks! A web legend speaks!

Ahem. In my gushing schoolgirl behavior (and I was a schoolgirl, after all, when I first read and saw the works by these guys) I forgot to comment on the site itself.

I love the design, though it's not for resolutions lower than 1024x768. The typography is excellent, grunge on top, and elegant on bottom. I can't get enough of the "since 1995" -- with wings -- header! I wish the permalink buttons were less modern looking, but that's just a minor detail. The colors, well they remind me of the current site of then Alexis Massie now Alexis Allen, but darker and more inky. I only wish the powazek/is page was as styled as the main blog.

It's definitely, as someone else said, about the footer, which is brilliant. Though there's a bit too much white (or white-ish) space for me in places, I like it a lot overall, so much, in fact, I had to comment for a change, rather than my usual brand of awestruck lurking. I am a complete sucker for the "Old West meets grunge" motif he has going in the detailing. Maybe it's really just that "hardcore" wicked worn thing, but something about the typography coupled with some of the filligree/detailing work leaves me with that impression. Kudos!

I'm so confused. What warrents this site to be a 9.1 after 54 votes?! It's done nicely, but... I'm confused.

Coding is not perfect and the design is nothing original. So.. 9.1 after 54 votes..?

Aside from some minor issues with the code, I like this one a lot.

That so-called "grunge" effect is always risky and I have respect for anyone that can pull it off effectively. This site does that.

I really like the footer being used as subnavigation as opposed to the sidebar alone. This is something to be inspired by and added to my arsenal.

Nice job, Derek P.

Nice! Looking at this I guess I need to work on my own site a bit again! Grunge with a clarity! The bottom nav is really good thing as well, I though about similar things before... it's a very rewarding experience actually scrolling down a blog and finding a surprise!

Finally someone beat we.burza but I saw this kind of concept site somewhere before so I'm not that amazed ,still nice clear raw site you got there Derek

yes, yes, yes.

WOW! The design is incredible. And his reasoning on moving the navigation to the bottom sold me.

He must have been checking out the BusinessLogs.com redesign that happened about a month ago for ideas on the footer ;)

Looks really great though!

i find the high rating for this site generous...the markup is far from semantically sound, and the css is rather average...the weathered header is nice, but the recent overuse of weathered aesthetics and gothic fonts leaves me uninspired....

Nice subtle textures; great contrast between the green, black and white; always thoughtful content; my first impression is rockin', this is good design here.

And please, nerds, stop talking about divs and css; will we ever get past that?

And please, nerds, stop talking about divs and css; will we ever get past that?

first time visitor?..Stylegala certainly has higher expectations than just judging sites on a surface level....

@michael, yes I've been here before (and we've been posted here before). But it's always the same spitting of words like uninspired, unoriginal and usually from people that rarely link to their own site, open themselves up for the same critiques and likely haven't been in the same positions. These positions being many things from "a busy designer" to experienced and seasoned by a variety of design projects larger than a 2-page blog. And while I'm not directly pointing at you, these kinds of comments are tiresome to hear, especially when it's often from the same ilk.

Don't confuse nit-picky code comments as thoughtful critique.

I should follow-up: there are certain contexts where the nit-picky could be deserved and helpful; I don't think this comment box is that context.

After so much positivity a bit of negativity shouldn't hurt, does it, Derek ? ;-)

Certainly a fan of grungy sites this one leaves me bit unsatisfied because

1) of the mixture of sharp and blurred brushes, that were probably used for the header graphic. Especially the grunge effect on the font isn't to my liking. Also the contrast between header and ephemera-"board" confuses me.

2) I don't agree with putting important content to the bottom of the page. It's the first impression that matters and without scrolling I don't get to see anything of the sites footer making it look a bit dull (15" PB).

I like the ephemera-"board" as well as the footer's styling a lot although I'm not pleased with the footer's positioning as stated above already.

I find the design to be very sexy overall. The background color is gentle giving the heading (especially the name within the header) powerful exposure. I also like the fact that the menu is within the footer area. In fact, I have created my portfolio (which is not online yet) with the exact idea in mind a few weeks ago. So now I've either got to redo my portfolio grid design or be shouted at as being a blasphemious plagiarist. :/

I do have one point that I'd like to criticise though; the main navigation does not work without javascript enabled and I cannot find any alternative means of browsing your site other than by having javascript enabled. Was it intentionally conceptualized to only have the js option available to site visitors?

All in all, this is one of the more "emotionally striking" designs I've seen lately. It does not leave one cold and has a very inviting feel to it that makes me interested in reading more and surfing your site more.

Thank you and kind rega

Grungy and clean combined - really well considered.

The composition and typography is expertly executed.

The navigation at the bottom - don't see what folks' problem is with this - it's clearly placed and neatly organised, and it is also nice to have it out of the immediate visual arena when reading the content.

It's great to have an unconventional structure that also works in terms of aesthetics and usability.

As soon as he sorts out his markup (which, if you have seen Derek's work before, you know he is good for and so is not down to a lack of expertise), then the 'view-source-super-geeks' can sleep easy (let's face it, they have to comment on something, coz most who tear sites apart on slightly lazy (but valid) markup, have absolutely zero understanding of visual communication and creative design, and therefore have nowt else to say) ...

Wow, dmr.

Words such as "uninspired" and "unoriginal" have just as much warrent on a critique as "nerds" and "stop talking about div and css."

Seriously, what the heck was that? You can't just come onto Stylegala and expect to keep its high level of professionalism with comments like that. And Red Labor may have been reviewed before, but that doesn't automatically give you just to think your comments mean more than someone like myself.

In my opinion, Derek's site is simply

(A) Unoriginal

(B) Plain

(C) Not semantically perfect

And thus the question is why an 8.5 still? Man, it's worth a high six or low seven.

It's not THAT great... I'm confused.

I wouldn't particularly agree Kristopher, that the comment section on Stylgala preserves a particularly high level of professionalism. Bickering, sniping and unhelpful comments are common from both sides. At the end of the day, I think most people are just judging on personal preference alone, and demanding rigourous semantic markup is, for certain people, a personal preference. For others, visual appeal far outweighs good or bad code. It's all individual taste.

Anyway, from a personal viewpoint (the only viewpoint I'm qualified to to give) this site is perfectly-balanced, visually beautiful for reading, and semantically, I couldn't care less. I'm glad it's got a high mark. I hope it continues.

Just tossing my two cents into the discussion.

Visually, Derek keeps everything in check. Everything seems to fall into place naturally.

I'm not too fond about this trend with keeping a lot of stuff in the footer, thus hiding it from me. I have to scroll my way down to fully explore the site. Matter of taste for me, but for others it's more. My guess is that Derek knows his target audience. But he should also know that his target audience isn't necessarily his real audience. Assuming that his user can efficiently and flowingly handle his/her scrolling is a mistake. Heck, if you stash away your extras like that, chances are most people will miss it.

Position: fixed would have been a great fix to layouts like this.

Semanticly, code-wise, it's not pretty, but who cares in the end of day ... just me! It does validate though. And I would acctually assume HTML 4.01 is more accessible than XHTML, in terms of browser support. Now we're speaking horribly old browser, but still

Nice look, though I find the greyish background color a bit boring. I found the unstyled select boxes in the "previously" section in the footer odd. Why not put your select options in Trebuchet MS as well? + Same font-size/color as the other text in the footer? The "technorati me" and "google me" buttons could use some more appropriate styling as well (why not take your chance to create a nice looking grungy button?). But other than that: nice job.

It is really an amazing site. Lovin' the grungy look.

The site feels somewhat disconnected to me. The different design elements don't come together, they feel separate. The header one its own looks great, I think the site would look better if he managed somehow to integrate the header with the navigation. Though of course if he did that, then the site wouldn’t have the navigation at the bottom, the new trend. I don’t like having the navigation on the bottom unless the whole site will always be above the fold, but that’s just me. So, over all this design is good, but I wouldn’t be giving it a 7.9 as compared with what some other sites are getting.

Derek excels at clean, almost formal, design. Now he's playing with a folksy Western aesthetics. Super fun, and perhaps even a bit outside his safety net.

I very much like the layout. I would never expect to see a Powazek design where everything wasn't in its place and styled according to importance. I'm delighted. The content is what's important here and the content is front and center, beautifuly packaged, easily consumed. Can't ask for more.

Hm, I don't think that's a footer. I think it is a separate strip of paper running across the page, like you'll see sometimes on a book jacket.

Look Ma! Criticism!

The header treatment is stylish, though using oversized typeface is reminiscent of recent fray designs. I'm not sure it meshes well with the rest of the design. Was he going for a true Victorian Old-West historical look or the glam-West look of the 90's-era Red Hot Chili Peppers or the grunge look..? I'm not entirely sure, and so the mood is less impa

Original and great design. I think like Simon Collison, it's one of the sites that make a big impression.

Nevermind the quality of the CSS code when the resut is like this.

It's gold for nerds.

Nice site but I don't realy like the header. It's much like a quick photoshop thingie on which you experimented with some brushes... imo eh :)

Rest of the site is nice tho !

This type of design being fashionable nowdays, partuculary bloored fonts which remind a kind of ancient signs. What concern to text,/fonts they are properly used on the website, no odd, or mess up like on many other sites. I didn't read all text on the site, cause my expression concern more design rather than content...

Anyway, nice stylish website.

i like the design but the header is not good for this design.

This really hits the spot for me as it looks authentically like an offline material but still highly usable as a website.

I like the design. I don't like the header.

I'm not very proffesional in graphic design, that's why I would like to know how to create such blury header?

Concerning the site - the overall skin is pretty soft colored, and unique