Although I’ve received many positive comments on the design of the old front page, it was never meant to be useful. In fact, before that one I had only had some witty comment or something on there, and then just happened to add some links, then the (superfluous) web 2.0-ish loading/fading sequence, then the pong players in the background. As the number of links grew, I think the page lost its je ne sais qui.

As you can see, the header colors, fonts, and sizes are the same as on this blog. The background pattern is similar, but with different colors (Persian blue and azure on the blog; Burgundy and Hollywood cerise on the front page) and the locations (top on the blog; left on the front page). I like how it’s similar yet different.

Anyway, the old front page had a “click-through rate” of just around 20%, meaning 80% of the people who visited it didn’t go any further (which wasn’t my intention at the time I designed it either, but times change). It’ll be interesting to see if that improves with this new one – I’m betting it will.

I’m a big fan of colors. I love them! And even more – palettes! Palettes are collections of colors that fit well together. I also like painting with water colors. This palette I’ve developed – originally for paintmyblog.com – is, I would like to claim, the best palette ever. I’ve given much thought, googling, wikipeding, and time to choosing every single one of these colors. And I’ve gone through many iterations.

Although it is not out of the question that I might tweak a shade or hue here or there, I am prepared to announce this the final 1.0 release of my palette. Without further ado, I give you [pause for drama]… the colors.

In order, from right to left, upper to lower (yeah maybe my way of ordering is a bit strange, but that’s how it is):

DA70D6 orchid
F400A1 Hollywood cerise
F34723 pomegranate
FF2400 scarlet
FF7E00 amber
800020 Burgundy
FDE910 lemon
BFFF00 lime
00FF7F spring green
808000 olive
228b22 forest green
008080 teal
1C39BB Persian blue
007FFF azure
7DF9FF electric blue
F5F5DC beige
FBCEB1 apricot
CDB891 ecru
EEDC82 flax
734A12 raw umber
C0C0C0 silver
464646 charcoal

These are the only colors I will use in my productions from now on. In fact, since I’ve been developing this palette for some time now, some of my recent productions, such as paintmyblog.com (ironically that palette is a beta version, not this exact one), and Minesweeper use these colors. Also I think this blog uses only colors from this palette… hmm… anyway, I haven’t adapted the henrikfalck.com front page yet; it’s completely incompatible still.

This is not to say these are the best albums, music wise, ever, although all of them are incidentally (or is it?) among my absolute favorite albums. Without further search engine spam, I give you, in somewhat ranked order, the covers of these for respective masterpieces of musical history:

The cover shows a drawing of a photo of the Hindenburg zeppelin crashing, like a lead zeppelin, and burning. Huge impact, don’t you think? The impression is for me just like the music on the album.

In this case too the cover shadows the mood of the album, in some strange way. It shows a prism refracting white light into the full spectrum of colors – or, of course, the opposite (which I think is the beauty of it). I’m inclined to say the Led Zeppelin cover is the best with this one being second, but, as an aside, for sure The Dark Side of the Moon is the best album ever made music wise.

I’m not really sure what the cover of the best hip-hop album ever made is supposed to depict, but also in this case it conveys the theme of the album; the dystopian story of mech pilot/rapper Deltron Zero in the year 3030. It looks like something from an early 20th century science fiction novel a la Metropolis, with people crossing a bridge and entering a sphere-like structure on the other side.

The step from 3rd to 4th place is large. In some way I think this album cover represents many nice ones with a similar theme – sweet harmony of colors and shapes basically. But this album does it best. Unfortunately, I don’t get any feeling of connection between the cover and the music on the album. (This second album is quite disappointing compared to The Music’s first, self-titled, album anyway.) But anyway, the design is kinda perfect: I mean the colors, the mirroring, all make it look very web 2.0, and yet it definitely doesn’t seem to be computer generated. I think they actually set this up in plastics with a real mirror and lights and stuff.

That concludes today’s completely subjective listing presented as fact. Isn’t it intriguing that two out of four albums here, even though it’s supposed to be about design, are theme albums? I really love theme albums. Especially Deltron 3030 – the story it tells from beginning (cameo by my beloved Damon Albarn) to end (cameo Damon Albarn) actually makes a good (somewhat extremely ironic) science fiction story in itself.

Now for some runners-up:

Kraftwerk
Trans-Europe Express

Embee
Tellings from Solitaria
funkey 60s/70s retro feeling