Old Paper Part 2
2nd edition — by Patrick McNeil — Jul. 6, 2006
The Design Element
I always seem to gravitate to the odd balls of a group and in this case I am drawn to skaramuzi.com. Sure the site doesn't have deep content, but what it lacks in content it makes up for in style and originality. The idea of making the page of a site appear within a piece of paper is an easy path to head down. But this site takes the idea and pushes it in a whole new direction, creating a one of a kind experience. If you wish to design a site in this style I suggest exploring how you can take the paper idea and push it, make it your own, and let your site stand.
Some random ideas I have in regards to making for unique experiences if your site is paper style.
- Have pages that are idle to long fold up into origami.
- Allow users to dog ear pages for later reference.
- Increase the degree of deterioration of a page as users look at it more. More traffic = more worn.
- Have text fade on the page as it gets older. Could be as simple as altering text color dynamically on a page before it loads.
I am not picking on this set at all, the sites below are beautiful in various ways, but after looking at so many sites I have become jaded and drawn to the odd balls. My only real hope is that you will take these sites and be inspired by them, not to copy them, but to explore even more ways to implement this style of a site.
Sample Usage
Downloads
Links
A great source for a few free paper images:
Rare Books &
Special Collections
iStockPhoto is
a terrific source of nice paper images to work with, and you can get them
cheap.
Mayang free paper textures
Folded paper Photoshop brushes (excellent)
