The Cattery

The Cattery

The Weather Makers

27 September 2005
Filed under Design, Folio, Text, The Interweb

During the last week, I’ve been working flat-out coding a promotional site for Tim Flannery’s new book, The Weather Makers. Because of the relatively short timeframe (a little under a month from conception to go-live, with the bulk of actual nuts-and-bolts work done in the last fortnight), there’s some flab in the code - maybe a few too many spans, divs and classes - but I’m generally extremely happy with how it’s turned out.

Perhaps the most satisfying thing about this job has been getting to work with another designer, for a change. Most of my projects are entirely conceived, designed and coded by me, and I know that in some ways my work suffers for it. While I’m a freelance designer because I crave control, sometimes the life of a freelancer is too full of Boring Stuff (like tax returns) to allow the kind of focus and attention to detail that the freelancer wants to achieve.

The Weather Makers was mostly designed by Chong Wengho, who is chiefly a book designer – this is (as far as I know) his first complete web design, and there’s a real freshness to his style. The tropes and trends of Web Standards World are largely absent, replaced with bold, readable typography and really strong navigation. I coded the layout from Chong’s PDF comps, and we both worked on the grunt-work of getting the text into style.

It’s also great to work with material that resonates so strongly with me. When I went through school, it was taken for granted that human impact was causing the earth to heat up; it’s alarming that the public consensus I thought we’d achieved on this issue has evaporated. Last night, while watching an interview with Tim Flannery on the ABC, we heard a lot about how “Tim thinks” that climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels – in the good ole days the ABC would have come out in support of his view, but not last night.

Views from the Floor

Joseph says:

I dig it. Don't much like the header, and I'm not enamoured of the right-squiggle, but possibly I'm hooked on certain tropes and trends. The typographical choices are excellent, and the colours work.

Tim Berners-Lee might point out that '<p class="quote">' could sensibly become '<blockquote>', or I might, but you know I'm a pedant.

Nice one.

Virginia says:

Well, we've got me to blame for the header, which I'm aware is a solution to a problem rather than an elegant design in itself, and if by 'right squiggles' you mean the little right-arrows, then I'll take credit for those too! Looking forward to working with you in the future, Joseph. :-)

EDIT: I see what you mean by right-squiggle. Yep, that's mine too. Those three things.

Joseph says:

Ha ha! Well it's merely a matter of taste, of course. And they're minor quibbles too. Great work, especially given the time you had.

I went book hunting last night -- saw that book prominently everywhere. But I was looking for The Latham Diaries, and came home empty-handed.

Naz says:

I like it. Nice bold colours, good typography. Not a big fan of the masthead either but not so much the aesthetic of it as such but I feel like I want to see the masthead extend all the way or something. Yet I like the icons like that too. Needs a divider or some kind of seperating treatment perhaps.

Nice work though!

Mark Goldes says:

See the article Ticking Time Bomb by John Atcheson. It originally ran in the Baltimore Sun, (USA) December 15th, 2004.

For a summary of the problem, much more serious than Flannery suggests, see the article: How We Might Improve the Odds for Human Survival Beyond 2050 -- on our website.

Speak, friend, and enter


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