Design © Michael Dougherty Ozark Web Solutions
Ozark Web Solutions
Design Gallery
A Word About Website Design
These website designs are not canned templates, they are all original and
developed by OWS. They deomonstrate the remarkable power of modern web
design software. Now it is possible to overlap images, work with layering and
transparency and other tactics to create websites hard to imagine just a few years
ago.
Having said that though, it remains true that your users will want a very direct, fast
experience. If you websites are hard to understand, you lose users immediately. It
is stylish now to create very complex user interfaces. A moments reflection though
will tell you that if you have to work to understand what you are looking at, you will
probably leave the site.
Our favorite book on web design is called "Don't Make Me Think". People want an
ATM-type experience. These designs reflect that design objective. They are the
foundation upon which pictures, text, and other web elements can be layered. Any
color on any design can be altered. These are just points of departure. They will all
open in a new browser window for comparison. Page weight is indicated. Less is
more, under 100K is smokin' fast.
| Design Name | Design Description |
| Cardboard Dark Red | This is a design showing the use of a graphic tile, in this case cardboard, in combination with layered boxes for a matt-like effect. It is a little heavy graphically. |
| Cardboard Dark Red II | Very similar to above, but mixing up the fonts and colors a bit. Adds an additional layer to get a compound mat effect. |
| Off White Charcoal Dark Red | A very conservative design, abandoning the graphic tile and sticking to solid off white colors and a formal look. Runs very fast even on a 56K modem. |
| 20% Gray Charcoal Dark Red | Simply subsitutes a light gray window for off white. Probably needs some color to make it get some zip. Still a fast website design. |
| Light Gray Bevel Charcoal Dark Red | Demonstrates the use of a beveled window design. Still very conservative and fast, but a little dressed up. |
| Gradient Gray Charcoal Dark Red | This design demonstrates use of a gradient window. Works well in many designs, often with an additional panel on the left side for text, menus or pull quotes. Gradients can be made with any combination of colors. |
| Straw Bevel Dark Red Brown | This design ventures into warm colors utilizing a very pale straw color for the main window and a brown textured graphic tile for the website background. More dressed up but still fast and quite subdued. |
| Straw Bevel Ruby Blues | Similar to the design above, but run off into more vibrant colors with a less conservative tone. |
| White Bevel Silver Red Blue | This is a classic and conservative red, white, blue and silver design. Research shows that red, white, and blue sites are appealing to the largest audience. |
| Stucco Dark Red | This uses a graphic stucco tile for the main body, but it is made semi-transparent and this creates a slight red cast in the graphic tile while muting its texture. |
| Simple White | Often simple is best. No distractions here, just straight ahead design. Simple designs like these can be adapted to many color schemes because they don't compete or clash with unusual colors. White goes with everything as they say. |
| Rock Trace Simple | This design uses a conservative rock tile for the background then makes the main panel slightly transparent to pick up just a hint of the texture of the underlying tile. Provides a tasteful effect, subtle but offering a hint of design spice. |
| Silver Simple Bevel | This simple template is the basis of this website. It was employed with contrasting red type for an elegant, non-obtrusive design, one that supports the image of the site, but remains in the background. Less is often more in design. |
| Ultralight & Fast White, Dk Red Accents, text | Speed lovers design. Stick with one image a page and this baby loads in 2-5 seconds. Remove the image, and it is twice as fast. Fast pages matter and they can be built using only typography to carry the design. Look at Google pages, usually just one image. |
| Ultralight & Red, Line Accent | Another speedy design, not so different but using a vertical line to break up space. Still under 80K total weight, this one is a burner. Speed matters. Any color can be substituted for the lines, links and background. Textured background, add a couple of Ks, still fast. |
| Ultralight Minimalist, Red Accents, Black and White | At 52K page load, this is very fast. Emphasizes typography over images, but uses minimal BW graphics for accents. Dark red text for contrast. Links right. |
| Ultralight Calamity Jane, includes Text Art | 80K, still very fast because of minimal images, this design will run like the wind. |
| Ultralight -- Rock and Charcoal | 81K, uses text rendered as images to employ different fonts. Minimalist and understated. Rock. Meditative |
