MYSTlore talk:Design

From MYSTlore

An almost completely different sidebar organization and our own logo image (thanks to Tweek) aside, our design is largely the standard MonoBook skin. This is an okay solution, and has the huge advantage of familiarity, but I would appreciate some alterations anyway.

For one, I like uniqueness; I believe it is beneficial for a website to develop its own nature in both content and style.

But more importantly, I believe the color scheme is very problematic, due to its high contrast, when looking at images. Perhaps [1] is the best example of this. Because of the prevalence of bright colors in the background, the eyes can easily read the black text, which is good. But at the same time, they have a very hard time adjusting to the screenshots on the right. Details in the KI-protected door image at the bottom right are almost completely invisible, aside from the glowing KI logo itself. For [2], it's even worse.

The Star Trek wiki Memory Alpha would have a similar problem, except they worked around it by having a generally darker color scheme. I don't particularly like it (if not to say, some aspects of it are really quite ugly), but it works a lot better for the eyes to look at the images (conversely, reading the text is more difficult). For general reading, black on white text is great; for pages with screenshots, not so much.

Another solution would be to artificially 'enhance' the screenshots, i.e. increase their contrast. Or, we could merely change the templates of image subtitles around so that only the image and its surrounding area has a dark theme.

There's no perfect solution to this, but I do believe that toning down the glaring whites would help a lot.

Tweek's logo is also temporary and just a quick temporary solution (plus, using the Myst Island image isn't the most unique of choices). Shoom'lah developed a more specific logo from scratch; not sure if I'm permitted to post here though (ping?).

Another solution would be to artificially 'enhance' the screenshots, i.e. increase their contrast. Or, we could merely change the templates of image subtitles around so that only the image and its surrounding area has a dark theme. Chucker 08:11, 7 November 2006 (CST) (I rewrote some of this, so don't be confused by the response below being from an earlier date than the above)

I'd go with the suggestion for toning down the harsh whites. Not necessarily to flat greys, if only because Myst has such damn good colour theory and would mesh better with desaturated browns or blues... Almost-greys, that sort of thing. If we do end up doing that, then the text shouldn't quite be white... More of a cream so it isn't so hard on the eyes. Something. Shoomlah 19:06, 22 October 2006 (CDT)

I have added some primitive (and ugly) changes to make the immediate surroundings of image thumbnails be darker. Cf. Teledahn or Gahreesen for examples. Better? Worse? Chucker 16:34, 7 November 2006 (CST)

Here's the potential Book-and-Pen logo, cleaned up and tweaked a bit according to critiques. There are several colour schemes, so input on that would be good. As has been brought up, since most Myst sites are earth tones and since blue is done a lot, green might be a nice change of pace. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v30/shoomlah/myst_colours.jpg

...Aaand the logo incorporated into the name, as well: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v30/shoomlah/myst_logo.jpg

Oh, and the little icon for kicks: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v30/shoomlah/minimystloreB.gif Shoomlah 23:47, 10 November 2006 (CST)

Looks great! My only problem with the current logo (and it actually gets worse in shoomlah's edit) is that it's kinda difficult to make out "lore". It looks more like "love". Not that MystLove is a totally unreasonable name for a project like this :-), but still... and in Shoomlah's edit it looks like "MUST love". Which just sounds freaky. 84.217.140.190 10:53, 11 November 2006 (CST)

Heh. Interesting; I never saw that myself, but I can see where you're coming from. I believe this is the exact same typeface as realMyst's logo, though (i.e., put the italic "lore" in front of the "MYST", then change it to "real", and you have realMyst's very logo; not from its box, but from its trailers):

http://www.mystiquenet.com/albums/realmyst/RealMyst_Introduction.highlight.jpg

So, you apparently argue it could be read as "vealMyst" :-)

Anyway, if you have alternative font suggestions; go ahead, but I'm rather fond of Shoom'lah's creative variant of the upper-case 'Y', myself. Chucker 10:58, 11 November 2006 (CST)