Joshuaink

this site is just awesome.

i rated it with a 9.

the color, typografie and especially the flowers feels realy chilled and relaxing to me.

congratulation to this beautiful site.

Whatever you think about flowers I can't see how you don't love this site. It's simply beautiful. But what's up with the blue slice-box/line? Still, that's minor.

Wow! not what I was expecting when I saw the thumbnail. This site is beautiful.. I kinda liked the blue slice box, different.

John deserves a high five for this one.

Simply gorgeous.

More than great; I think it's fantastic design. It it will be highlight my heart.

Gratulations...

With one look at this design, how can you NOT fall in love with it. Absolutely stunning! The subtleties of the site brings everything together wonderfully.

This one is destined to be a classic. Successful web design is about attention to detail, and this site certainly provides a role model for that principle.

I love it but....I noticed what to me looks like a small mistake? In the graphic you can see the blue highlighter lines and corner squares from the app. Looks like it was done in fireworks. Is this a mistake or meant to be?

Oh come on people - the blue highlighter lines are obviously meant to be! No-one would seriously think he'd make a mistake like that surely!?

Personally I love them - I think it's a beautiful piece of detail that everyone wishes they could think of.

Stunning.

Okay, I'll quit staring at my stats for a second and say thank you to Simon for a great review and thank you to everyone for your very kind words... it's good to be loved! :-)

Now... about those blue lines....

"In the graphic you can see the blue highlighter lines and corner squares from the app. Looks like it was done in fireworks. Is this a mistake or meant to be?"

The only way you could achieve that, is by screengrabbing it. Such marks are never exported, so it has to be done on pur... wait, why am I even justifying something so obvious?

It looks great, and it's got people talking about it.

// goes off to add blue lines to things...

It's absolutely one of the most elegant and attractive designs I have ever seen. Two thumbs and two toes up on this one!

Very Beautiful design.

So simple, yet so nice!

Amazing what beautiful hand-crafted illustrations can do with minimalistic standards. I would like to highlight and logo. Nice one.

I second your call there David, Denis did an amazing job on the illustration.

Spooky, everybody likes it! My girlfriend says she doesn't like it, it looks too kitschy. Does that count?

Just kidding John, you know that I really like it. It seems like Textpattern websites have something in common: less useless features and a functional design. Well, that's just my personal opinion as a WP user...

Tell your girly it matches the pink feather lamp shade in my office... pfft! ;-)

Yes, it's a nice design with the flowers but this is not a GREAT site. How bout a little variety? I agree, a very nice illustration but how bout mixing it up a bit...How long can you look at some hippie looking flowers before it gets old? 5 minutes?

saw it on cssvault...and i find this site really good and beautiful...

So, I'm a little confused. What exactly is making this site a classic and better than any other designs in the archive? With an exception of the header which was masterfully done, John, I feel like the rest of the site is just normal. Normal isn't bad though. I'm just saying that there's too much white space and the body font looks like Verdana, which is normal. I'm lost on why it's one of the best.

Maybe if you tied in the rest of the site with your beautiful header (other than green l

I ran out of chars, hehe. What I was saying was maybe you can tie the rest of the site in with your beautiful header, other than green links. I just didn't feel design-wise that it was complete site-wide.

But I totally agree with the review - this is one of the best examples on how to seperate content from structure. I'll be learning from your CSS, John.

Thanks for the feedback Chris. Just some back. In terms of fonts then I wanted to play it safe and go for Arial because personally I don't see the point of using some way out font that only 20% of site visitors will have. I also think it is really difficult to get the balance right on the font sizing when you do give an unusual font to start and then opt for something more obvious as a fall back. I think there are a lot of sites that make this mistake.

'I feel like the rest of the site is just normal'. Agreed and I have no problem with that, it was never my intention to produce some ground breaking GUI, I just wanted something that was useable, if that makes it normal, that's fine by me.

' maybe you can tie the rest of the site in with your header'.

What would you do to improve upon what I have done? And I am genuinely interested to hear your thoughts.

My problem is when I get past your gorgeous header. There's two columns with no border, no shading, and no seperate tone. Instead, it feels like I'm drowning in a sea of white with nothing to remind me of your beautiful header except a green-colored link. I understand that you may not want to use special fonts - and I agree... for a body text. Maybe you can decide on a font that matches your garden theme and have that be a gif-h1 if you know what I mean.

Kris I am looking into siFR and PNG replacement for the headings but I need transparency for all browsers, a toughie for sure. What font would you pick for the headings, just out of interest?

The white was a concious decision because the content varies so greatly it _could_ clash with the flowers, limiting it to the top allows me to account for the design and then get on with the nonsense. I plan to add something to the foot later that will reflect the head. brief but running out of chars! :-

I think the white works really well. The site has a beautiful header, and clean & simple content. Perfect blog design for me!

A well designed header would probably be a very good addition, John!

I'm sorry. In my previous post I meant "footer" not "header." The site already has am amazing header :).

A downright amazing header, John. I absolutely love it. That said, however, I agree to some extent on the typography and "normal-ness" of the rest. It could do very well with a few improvements.

Aren't we all, with the exception of a few, forgetting to give creditd where credit is due? Everyone seems to be telling John what an amazing header he has, but honestly, did Denis Radenkovic not do the complete illustration and logo design?

I think they both deserve a big pat on the back.

Fantastic graphics! The quality of the imagery, in addition to the way it overlaps/is overlapped by the window and content is superb!

I much prefered the older design, with just a few leaves floating down... that was gorgeous. The current one is clever, but over powering. And a bit too repetative (with the (presumably photoshop) brushes)

A bit late but just to answer Alex's note about Denis. You will find credits _everywhere_ on my site for Denis, with links to his site, whereever and whenever the design is mentioned.

A few thoughts, at the risk of sounding arrogant, 1: This was _my_ idea 2: I paid Denis to do the work and many people don't alwasy credit in these situations, so a bit of credit for me there too!

I think Denis did an awesome job but I put a lot of effort into it also. And yes we both deserve credit and it has been duly given.

Indeed, John. You do give credit to Denis on the site, however I was referring to the comments about the header on this page.

Many people click these links, look at the design, maybe read a few blog entries, then exit out. Not everyone is going to read deep into the content at a glance and see the credits.

By no means was I saying that Denis should take all credit for joshuaink, simply that you both (as I said above) deserve a pat on the back for the obvious hard work you've put into this project.

Okay, well Denis is also mentioned in the review on this very page, can't do much about people not reading stuff. But whatever, Denis is happy with publicity he got as a result. I am happy with the traffic. Everybody's happy just like a good bunch of hippies should be! :)

Heh. I feel a group hug coming on.

I used to be a landscape gardener, I used the most beautiful plants that had been grown by dedicated and talented others but it was the presentation that made the garden stunning, nough said innit!

Nice one John.

I'm a bit late here but, well said Graham! Brilliant job John... once again.

Sorry Denis, I forgot to congratulate you also. Wonderful job, your pen nibs must be tiny to get that much detail, amazing.

This is great. The pictures are huge, but the image they create is totally worth it.

Looks Like He Found Some Peace...He Took His Site Down.

What A Day.

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Very sad to see his site is gone...too bad so many people were being creeps.

damn this is fine

Site is up for me and it is very nice looking.

It is refreshing to see a site that actually uses colors other then grey, black, red and blue.

This site is the flowers.

Hello my name is Yo Momma, and I have son by the name of Josh and he is very dissapointed to find out he is named after a failure of a company. sooooo u need to change the name of your company.... please.... or yo momma gonna be mad!!!!!!!

I adore this design and its baroque minimalism.

Robert's question:

>How long can you look at some hippie looking flowers before it gets old?

A very very long time, I guess. Months have passed, but I still feel the urge to revisit the site every now and then, just to see the design again. It's soothing and ironic.

This site is very eye catching on first impressions - but when you scratch below the surface, there isn't much else there (in terms of design). And to be honest, it feels a little like someone has placed a fancy wig on top of a bald head :)

Having said that, I visit from time to time to look at the site again and the flowers are still impressive months later (as Maddalena commented), so I guess that shows that something as 'simple' as a highly detailed illustration can be enough to cause your visitors to return even if your content doesn't interest them!

I wish I had the time to learn CSS properly..oh hang on I don't have any clients at the mo...guess I do have the time now :P

Cool site JO...I know tht I haven't commented on ya blog in ages, but I do still pop in from time to time just to have a read ;)

Fantastic! The fonts are a little bit small for me. Anyway this site is one of my favorites.