I think that’s the dilemmna I’m in right now. My client’s name is Crowded Castle, and I kept playing around with some kind of visual metaphor when designing the website (because the last website they had DID NOT look anything close to a crowded castle)
Then, for their Flash homepage, I came up with a simple geometric design that resembled the sihoulette of a castle. I liked it, and then they liked it. But when I showed the design to friends, family, they weren’t too hot about my castle design interface because (1) there was alot of unused negative space, even though I filled that space up with a textured background, and (2) My castle interface appears that it floats on the page. However, I decided to let that effect stay and even applied a shadow to the interface. I got this idea by visiting a site’s homepage that had a variety of floating panels that displayed the navigation and other information. Also if you look at the baby blue kirupa title bar, it appears to “float” as well, with a small shadow.
But how many of you think that a floating interface is bad design? Is there a current trend or school of design that generally judges a interface that doesn’t connect with the background as bad taste? :puzzle: Here’s an example of a floating interface: www.artnomad.com
And, since this is Showcase And Critiques, here are the two samples. The first one is the original one I sent to my clients. I had to shrink it down a little because I can’t attach anything over 74 K. The second one is a much larger interface that takes up most of the page, yet it still floats. It looks elongated now, because I just changed the size of the interface without going into the particulars of making everything on the interface normal-sized.