Submitted by Jeremy Mansfield, @brandaiddesign. Designer & Developer.
With the Hemingway site, we wanted the viewer to feel like they were getting a top-down view of a Hemingway writing desk, and staring at his journal. This opened itself up to some fun and creative Photoshop layout executions. We weren’t concerned with “how are we going to program this”. We just knew we’d figure out a way. And that “way” ended up being the muscle behind .PNG transparencies, absolute positioning and z-indexing.
There’s something about this design that I like, it took me a while to really put my finger on it and I realize now it’s the warm tone to the palette. The wood background and other colors chosen really sell the idea of Hemingway (at least the idea of him that I have in my head.) One thing about this design that may not be working for it so well is the concept, I took me several viewings to fully grasp what the site is ‘about’. Overall I think this is a well executed design with some nice real world imagery burned into it. Good stuff.