Fabric
1st edition — by Patrick McNeil — Aug. 14, 2008
The Design Element
This particular topic has been on my collection for quite some time, I love the style, but it seems it is not that heavily used so it took me a while to assemble this list of sites below. All the same I think they are a sweet cluster of sites and serve the style really well. First and foremost is the fact that though these sites make use of fabric in their design they aren't necessarily fashion or textile oriented. Lets just look at a few samples to see how this style is leveraged in various ways.
One of the samples I like in particular is Missy site. In this case the fabric is pretty much for the purpose of design aesthetic. There doesn't appear to be any deep rooted meaning in the usage. But ultimately it is a very distinct style that feels fresh and stylish. I really love the tag line that says "great design is in my jeans," that's just awesome considering the site.
The Brainwash Factory is another fantastic example. The clear integration between the logo box and the background is just fantastic. Again, it feels so extremely fresh, authentic, and original. I suppose this plays into the organic approach many designs are taking on these days, but all the same, it feels quite distinct. I do think the content section of this site could be pushed a bit though. It seems that this fabric style could be interwoven with the content a bit more (man I am loving the puns today).
One interesting twist on this style is sites that have pseudo fabrics. Celebrity Favorite Things and Catherine Colebrook are two examples of this approach. The Celebrity site in particular seems like a very implementation of this. In particular I like how the main navigation is in a style that feels like something that would be stitched onto fabric. And the semi 3d ribbon effect really brings a depth to the site this fabric oriented site would other wise not have.
Sample Usage
Links
Genopal (Color pallet creation software)
COLOURlovers (Excellent color pallet collections)
Kuler - pallet builder from Adobe /
ColorBlender.com (The
best tool I have found for easily creating beautiful color pallets)
Great color browsing resource (Named colors, by hue, etc)
Color
Scheme Generator
Color
Blender (On MeyerWeb)
Color In Motion
Color Schemer Online v2
Color Schemer Gallery
Color Symbolism
