For A Beautiful Web

Typesetting The Waste Land

With only a week to go until our first Visual Web Design Master Class in London, I've been taking time away from client work to focus on writing all new content that I hope people attending will really love.

It is really important to me that I stretch my own limits when I make content for a new workshop. I hope that if I get excited and passionate about my content, then people attending will do the same.

This time I chose to do something a bit different. I chose to typeset each of the five parts of The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot. My self-set challenges were:

  • To base each layout on a different typographical or layout principle
  • To use the same structural XHTML markup for every part
  • Not to use images
  • To design all but the grid in the browser, not Fireworks or Photoshop

I will write a detailed article about my The Waste Land layouts after next week's workshop, but in the meantime here are screen-captures of each of them.

The Burial of the Dead

The Burial of the Dead The Burial of the Dead

A layout based an archetypal classical double-page spread.

A Game of Chess

A Game of Chess A Game of Chess

Layout created from a Fibonacci squares based grid.

The Fire Sermon

The Fire Sermon The Fire Sermon

A newspaper inspired approach where the column width was based on the measure and the number of columns was dictated by the measure and the layout width.

Death by Water

Death by Water Death by Water

A simple, striking, elastic layout based on the measure.

What the Thunder Said

What the Thunder Said What the Thunder Said

An unusual combination of two grids with perspective and scale, inspired by an architectural photograph.

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag

I found working with poetry as subject matter fascinating and if you need an injection of inspiration in your design work, step away from your client work and spend a few hours typesetting a piece of verse.

This event is now sold out

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There have been 8 replies so far

  1. #1Clinton Montague

    Nov 24th 2008 • 3:49 pm

    I love the minimalism of websites purely based on type. It’s something that I strive to achieve as being a developer I struggle to make anything look even remotely nice in photoshop/illustrator :P

    I think that I might take you up on the advice to typeset a verse, boosts skills as well as, I would imagine, being rather relaxing.

    It’s a shame that I can’t make it to the master class, I look forwards to seeing the articles after the event!

  2. #2Jason Armstrong

    Nov 24th 2008 • 11:00 pm

    Really beautiful work! It’s times like this that I wished I lived in the U.K. or could at least afford to make a quick trip over.

  3. #3Milan

    Nov 25th 2008 • 1:16 am

    Nice job Andy! Best Wishes in the future…

  4. #4Jeff Croft

    Nov 25th 2008 • 7:54 am

    Academic exercises like this make CSS look so sexy and perfect and easy! I so wish it were that way in the real world...or that I could just do stuff like this for a living.

  5. #5prisca

    Nov 25th 2008 • 11:24 pm

    Andy,
    all I can say is - simply beautiful.
    ... to have the luxury of time to play with CSS for sheer pleasure - looking forward to the workshop :-)

  6. #6Andy Clarke

    Nov 26th 2008 • 12:24 am

    @Clinton Montague: It’s a shame that you can’t make it to the workshop this time, maybe we’ll see you at a future event.

    @Jason Armstrong: I hope that we’ll be able to bring a few events to the US next year, maybe in partnership with another conference organizer or another event

    @Jeff Croft: CSS is sexy and perfect and easy. And I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter really tastes like butter too.

    @Prisca: I’m looking forward to seeing you next week too. The time to do this wasn’t really a luxury. As you’ll see on Monday, I haven’t been sleeping much lately.

  7. #7Kev Charlton

    Nov 26th 2008 • 2:27 pm

    Love the newspaper inspired one...looking forward to the workshop!

  8. #8prisca

    Nov 26th 2008 • 11:29 pm

    Andy, I didn’t mean it like that :)
    Looking at your samples here - only made wish I had the luxury of time to play, create some beautiful design just for the sake of it ;-)
    Glad I can at least indulge in your creations on monday :)

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