Click on the image for a full-res version

I've been struggling a lot with my redesign of the ajtone.com website redesign. Initially, I was thinking of a very minimalistic website that would sink into the white background of the browser, using a very conventional page structure. The more I worked on this the more I realized just how disgusted I was with the thing as it just seemed to be a shoddy and bland version of too many other sites on the web.

But the other day while driving with Cate I had an idea flash into my head for something a little more unique, and so luckily I had a pen and an old envelope handy with which to secure my vision onto paper. (lest it be forgotten!) Today, finally, I had a chance to complete the above Photoshop mockup of my idea and Amanda at AJTone has seen it and is very enthusiastic about my 'version 2' interpretation of the site.

Although this new design would be an ideal candidate to take advantage of Flash, I am going to code it up as straight XHTML/CSS to save time and achieve the required animation affects with the use of some neat Javascript code I've been eyeballing like JonDesign's SmoothGallery. The flourishes are basically placeholders, as these came from tutorials I had on hand to quickly knock out the mockup. So while those will change, the general look will be quite the same.

What do you think?

Link: http://www.ajtone.com

Here is a mockup for my latest project, a complete redesign of AJTone.com:

To view at full size, click here.

Photography by Mandi Jane, new logo, layout, etc. by me.

Comments?

Link: http://csshowto.com/layout/psd-to-csshtml-in-easy-steps-part-1/

If you're a website front-end designer who is unfortunate enough to depend on others for the actual coding piece of the site development puzzle, then this tutorial is for you!

The folks at CSS How To.com have a massively-extensive 4 part series dedicated to the task that will help get your skills up to par.

Check it out by clicking on the link above!

I've never been a huge fan of Jean 'Moebius' Girard's work (if for no other reason than the fact that I came to his work later in life), but I am quite fond of his character designs and storyboard work for the failed Jodorowsky film adaptation of my favorite book, Dune.

The picture above is one of his fantastic character designs for the film of the character Liet Kynes, the Imperial Ecologist of Arrakis.

Check out this page on DuneInfo.com for more of his excellent work on this unfortunately doomed project.

The Sardukar and the Baron Harkonnen in particular are great!

Link: http://www.helpthehoneybees.com/

A friend sent me the link to this Flash site today, and I was really impressed with the complexity and simplicity of the site Häagen-Dazs® put together for their save the honey bees initiative.

The colors are soft and natural, very balanced and in tune with the subject matter. And while it has a good degree of interactivity, it doesn't overdo it on the visuals at all.

Check this great site out when you get a chance!

I'm going to try and register for at least one day of this conference, which should be well worth the money spent to register for it.

If you're a web designer and live in (or can make it to) Orlando between October 13th and 16th, you should check it out if you can.

View the schedule of events here.

One of my favorite web design sites, Web Designer Wall, has a great post you'll want to check out that lists 47 great Javascript plugins you can integrate into your web designs that you can use to enhance the user experience and functionality of your sites. As a bonus, they even include samples of the plugins in action!

Some of them, such as Lightbox and jCarousel I've used before. But the list includes many more that you'll find highly useful!

Check the list out here.

In doing my latest project for IvoryJones.net, I found that the standard CSS text-formatted list navigation just didn't quite fit right, but I was loathe to resort to using pure images as an alternative.

After searching around the web a bit I found a great CSS solution to my problem that turned out to be an wesome compromise: Matt Varone's text-based image navigation.

This solution is great because it allows you to use the power and flexibility of CSS in order to integrate images into your standard list-style nav bar. Another reason I love it is because it uses only a single image that contains all the different navigation items and states, which makes load times fast and keeps the overall file size small.

To see my slightly-modified version of his method in action, check out this.