Niggle

I knew I'd find Niggle here soon enough! I've been in admiration of this site for some time and am perplexed by how it manages to be so many adjectives (simple/beautiful/complex/brilliant) all at once. Great addition and congrats to Joseph!

Nice page, but he should browser-test it, I get errors in the design, Opera 7.54.

Nice looking site but UGHHHH, another angled banner thing.

The design is well executed, but it's also really aimed towards those who have higher resolutions (I'm talking 1600x1200 here. In 1024x768 the navigation is at the very bottom of the page, and I shudder to think of what it would look like at 800x600. - not very usable at all.

Also, the design is broken in Opera 7.53 also. I'm guessing that it's just broken in Opera in general.

Francey, I saw it on 800x600 Firefox WinXP and I didn't really see much problem with scrolling down for the nav. I believe Jacob Nielsen even mentioned that these days, people aren't afraid of scrolling. And considering Niggle is targeted towards web-savvy persons, pushing the layout for higher resolutions won't necessarily alienate his target viewers. :-)

I use 1024x768 at work and immediately clicked the back button because all I could see was the huge banner text. I came back and scrolled down and noticed a simple, boring grey layout.

The site is ok, but kinda boring considering the rest of the talent they put up here. It doesn't even have mouseovers on the main navigation. Doesn't deserve an average score of 7.2 . pfft.

I agree with James. I too immediately thought that this was the best design I had ever seen. It's clean and very well done.

Additionally, he went outside of the box and moved his content to the top of the home page in place of branding and navigation. It was a bold move that I believe was executed flawlessly.

I too, believe the design Joseph has executed at Niggle is excellent and very effective. The design really helps you Focus on the newest addition to his website.

I knew I should have copyrighted my green "FRESH" thingy. :P

This is one great site, very easy on the eye. Talented guy me thinks.

Its shit if you ask me

As always, designs are a subjective matter. Once you get past the novelty of the "split design", it's acctually a bit stale. The navigation doesn't quite do it for me either. It could be made even more obvious.

Typography matters, and yet again inconsistencies lead to disruption in reading. Again, typographic rules are meant to be broken, but a combinations such as Helvetica for headlines and Verdana for body text. It's violating such basic rules that makes me choke on my own heart.

I also think, that by all means, these simplistic layouts can offer more in the terms of accessability. This one does indeed do a good job, but there are visual perspectives as well, for instance the fixed width? One might argue about target group and all, but in an extremly simple layout like this, em and percentages are quite possible.

Still I like it. It has depth, without using any real graphics. The color scheme is soothing and simple and somewhat "out-of-the-box". Good job with this on

I am very surprised this site has garnered as much admiration as it has. I don't think the content-first novelty works at all. Sorry.

Rob Winters — When did you first employ the little green "fresh" tag? This design has been up since early January and honestly I hadn't seen yours ;) Great minds, etc.

Fredrik — Regarding typography: point taken, but also note that on the web Arial (not Helvetica) is awful at small sizes and Verdana is downright ugly at large sizes. Small Arial without antialiasing is nearly impossible to read on a Windows browsers, hence the choice of Verdana for body copy... can't count on users with OS X or ClearType. Also you'll find a large number of websites using Trebuchet for titles and Verdana for body copy. It's a popular combination, something that works well and I don't believe the basic rule you contend applies on the web, as much as anyone skilled in typography perhaps wishes.

fredrick, Andy — Thanks for your insightful comments. (?!)

Hi Joseph. You win. My green thingy went up around late Feb :( But has been on paper from around Jan. So I'll go along with your great minds theory :)

BTW I think the typography is great.

Browsed through the Stylesheets (and by the look of it) Helvetica is defined as your primary font for the Headings :). It's still a Sans-serif that I feel is too close to Verdana in terms of appearance.

I agree with Verdana for the body text, but it would certainly add more contrast to the headers appying a Serif or more consistent to just stick to Verdana. I can agree that one should also be consistent to the web. Most users today get to read their text in Verdana, it's what they will identify quickest and read quicker (due to habit). So I beleive that you can consider your fonts a valid choice, if you believe your target audience won't mind the subtle typographic rules.

One factor though, would probably be that you get a lot of fonts in there. Even a paper layout don't try to mix more than 3 or 4 fonts (preferably one from each family). On the web we're really limited, as we can't really use Script fonts, and there are very few "real" Fantasy fonts that's realistic to

Frederik, I'm not sure what Typographic rules you think Joseph is breaking. Using a billion and one typefaces with no thought to its relevancy in the page is one thing, but choosing one typeface for headlines and another for body copy is definitely NOT against the "rules" of Typography.

If there WAS a rule, the one I'd been taught in design school was the Power of 3 -- if possible, stick to a MAXIMUM of three typefaces in a document to keep proper visual hiearchy. You can break the rule, of course, if justified thoughtfully (look at Rolling Stone magazine--they love playing with grid and type changes, but still manage to keep everything consistent)

At any rate, it's possible that Joseph could have made more consistent, better typographic choices, but I don't believe that because he chose two typefaces you disagree with means a lack of typographic insight on his part.

Lea, I was not calling him a typographic alliterate or anything of the sort.

I have learned web typography by reversing paper typography. Keep yourself with the minimum amount of typefaces, preferably 2-3, at most 4. And never mix fontfaces from the same families. This is, for the web: One Serif, One Sans-Serif, One Script/Fantasy/Mono. Since Mono is very useful (and visually coherent) with certain presentational HTML elements, I prefer to keep it open.

Leaving a Fantasy or Script font. When you pick Arial, Trebuchet and Verdana you suddenly have three sans-serifs. The layman will hardly pay notice, his eye will just tell him that something looks slightly wrong. Again, it's a matter of preference. The rules are there to be broken. I just pointed out the inconsistency.

"never mix fontfaces from the same families"

Well, in this case let me prove you wrong by examples: Apple (mixes the corporate myriad with lucida grande), Microsoft (mixes arial and verdana all over), Stylegala (helvetica and verdana), Shaun Inman (DIN schrift and geneva) ...

Of course you can mix sans serifs - especially on the web where readability is a burning issue. Many companies has an already established corporate font that is not a part of the "web standards package", where they want to use their font in headers and a standard font in the paragraphs.

Is it just me, or is Adam Bouskila (commented above) using the same page background as Zeldman's HappyCog.com? Same filename, exact same filesize, 0.61kb.

http://www.adambouskila.com/i/wrapbg.gif

http://happycog.com/i/wrapbg.gif

^ Noticed this at 8:30 EST, May 17th.

Yes, Nathan.

I have tried different color backgrounds, but this one was the only one that worked.

I have also emailed Mr. Zeldman requesting his permission to use his background but received no reply. If he really did not want me to use it, he would have emailed a quick reply.

Now, I'm just wondering what's your point here in going off topic? Email me if you want to settle any problems or just simply talk.

This is not a 7.2 site?! This is a very basic layout / site, that should get 4 - 6s? Don't get me wrong, it is clean and simple, but its just that. Good work, nonetheless.

I love the simplicity of this site and how content-oriented it is. Nice typography, color palette, and most importantly: content. However, I'm not very fond of having to scroll down to the middle of the page to find the navigation.

...I dont get it. One of the best designed sites I've ever seen, this isnt!. Sure, having the content at the top is a nice idea usability-wise but having to play hunt the navigation isnt.

Given that the site is ovbiously designed for high res monitor I dont understand the need for the right half of my screen to be completely black while I have to scroll down to get at anything other than the first article.

Aesthetically its flat and quite dull. The colour scheme is bland and inoffensive, really uninspiring IMO.

Dont get me wrong, its not a bad site, a few novel ideas that might catch on but mostly just overhyped.

muy buena pagina.. excelente!!

niggle..thats funny..i was just kidding around with funny words, searching them, and here you are..funny stuff

The only thing I liked on the website was green blend on the top right side, others looks boring a little. Maybe some colorfull pictures could improve the look and feel..