James Tauber

journeyman of some

blog > 2008 > 01 > 12 >

Quisition Gets a Shiny New Look

I decided it was time for a redesign of the Quisition site. I started with the logo and things just took off from there.

I wanted to make the logo more modern and "lickable" and I found a really easy way to do it.

I started with the old logo, flat black text, Gil Sans Bold with a bit of kerning. Then I simply overlaid on top of the text an ellipse about as high as the text and maybe 50% wider, shifted up so that the bottom of the ellipse was roughly in the middle of the text. I then put a gradient fill on the ellipse: all white but varying in opacity from 15% at the top to 60% at the bottom. I then moved the blend midpoint about a third of the way up from the bottom.

I did the same to the green question mark, and voila!

I'm really happy with the result. I used the same technique for the shiny tabs and sign up button on the new site too.

BTW, I used OmniGraffle. It's not really designed for this sort of thing but did the job nicely.

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Comments (5)

Zellyn on Jan. 13, 2008:

Looks great! Minor nit: the parens around ( 232 Cards) are unnecessary.

James Tauber on Jan. 13, 2008:

Zellyn, done!

Grig Gheorghiu on Jan. 13, 2008:

James -- looks really good, with the exception (IMO) of the shiny tabs. I find that when I look at the Sign Up tab for example my eyes are strained because of the extra 'shine' on the button.

Zephyrly on Jan. 13, 2008:

James, I like it. In fact, I want to lick it. Just out of curiosity, did you experiment with reversing the solid color and gradient so that the top 2/3 or top 1/2 is black and the bottom 1/3 or 1/2 has the gradient. The way you have it has more the effect that you get with a sunset. If you reverse it, it would be more like a reflection in the water. IMHO, dark on the top might have a more striking appearance.

James Tauber on Jan. 13, 2008:

Zephyr, nice idea. I might try it out on habitualist.

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Created: Jan. 13, 2008
Last Modified: Jan. 13, 2008
Author: jtauber