Wed, August 20, 2008
The Orientation of the Grays—12:36 PM
Is there such a thing as too much grey? Granted, the writing on onebee usually dwells in various grey areas, but from a design standpoint, a little grey goes a long way. Amidst onebee's traditional late-summer minor redesign, I've been updating the photo pages (which never got updated to match last year's redesign) and making a few other small changes.
While I was at it, I decided to finally take a look at the site's sprawling style sheet – the code which specifies colors and layout for text and other items on the site. As designs have been added or changed, I haven't always taken the time to integrate them with existing styles, which means there are probably multiple separate descriptions for "small text" or "text with expanded margin." And there are far, far too many versions of "grey."
We use a lot of grey at onebee, because aside from the Beeie logo and the "beeline" we're pretty desaturated. The text speaks for itself and photos add the occasional splash of color. Grey helps separate one kind of information from another, or outlines something without giving it a hard, sharp edge. And as new grey things were added, they weren't always integrated with existing styles. So I dug into it, and found that the site was using 28 separate shades of grey! (Not counting the two tan-greys that fill the background of the site and the little navigation bar atop each page.)
In some instances, it was clearly out of hand. Some of the greys are so close together, they can't be distinguished by the naked eye. For example, one item would be E5E5E5 while another would be E6E6E6 . We'd have one 666666 and one 686868. What's the point of that?
So I slashed it back, combined greys where possible, and now we're down to a much more manageable 11 greys. (And some of those are in key areas like the comments or Buzzworthy, where minor shifts are necessary for contrast.) I don't know about you, but I feel better.
AC — Thu, 8/21/08 8:11pm
Interesting that you use "grays" in the header but "grey" everywhere else.
While they're transposable, "grey" is the old British way of spelling it whereas "gray" is good ol' American.
Looks like you're favoring the Brits here, and why wouldn't you?! Americans can't spell worth a damn anyway.
Bee Boy — Thu, 8/21/08 8:24pm
I've always been a fan of "grey" – looks softer to me. I needed to go with "gray" for the title, though. Joe knows why.
AC — Thu, 8/21/08 9:19pm
I'll have to take your word on that!
Bee Boy — Fri, 8/22/08 12:09am
Now that I think of it, I really hate Meredith Grey – so perhaps it's time to consider switching back!