After having finished my current book surprisingly early tonight and since I wasn’t in the right mood to stark with Walden, I sat down and developed an overall design for the website, developed categories und under categories and tried to set the tone for the entire project in Photoshop. Currently I am a bit ambivalent towards the color scene: The dominant colors are black and grey with red as an accent color. It is very fetishy, pseudodungeon and looks light nearly every BDSM shopping website I know. This might be good for recognition and instant associations but on the other hand I don’t want this website to be and maybe look like every other BDSM site. But since in my opinion content is more important than looks, I might settle for this “classic” design until the next relunch.
There are three major issues left:
- The text background color: Currently the background is white which is good for readability due to the high contrast. But this is also bad because the overall contrast between the navigation elements and the text element is too harsh. I might change the background to a light grey and wait for the feedback over the first few years.
- Font: I know I am mental about this and probably nobody cares. However I think the font is one of the most important factors of a written medium. It sets the mood, conveys an initial message and with factors light wellbeing and readability vitally influences how long people stay on a website. I have to admit after 6 hours of looking at fonts I haven’t found the right one yet. Neither for the texts nor for headlines, logos, etc. I might stick to Arial because it is clean but yet again: I don’t want to be that boring.
- Protection of minors: I want this website to be as accessible as possible which of cause might get me into problems. Even though this website should educate and provide information one might think that at best that it is erotic at worst pornographic. I have talked to a friend of mine who is a lawyer and read dozens of laws and I am pretty sure that I have found the right compromise between interestingly presented information and obeying to the law. So when you wonder why certain elements of BDSM are not shown here explicitly, you know why. Hopefully despite that inconvenience, everybody will enjoy the website.
