Background Patterns
Comments: 8
Jeffrey Zeldman mentions that “Repeating background patterns, once the shame of web design, have recently made a tasteful comeback.” (The “shame of web design” bit made me laugh: you did indeed used to see some truly horrible patterns. Swirling neon miasmas that effectively rendered whole sites illegible.)
He provides some great links to various examples and resources, all of which are well worth a look even if you’re not contemplating re-papering the walls of your site any time soon.
Version 2 of Antipixel came very close to having a background pattern. The example above from June last year was the one most likely to succeed only I couldn’t get it quiet enough without it becoming insipid, so I abandoned the idea. Which is a shame because I like background patterns. So it goes. At least it’s good to see that I can get my bg pattern kicks vicariously these days without my eyes being melted to mush.
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Posted to The Good • 2003.05.04 (Sun) • 16:39
Comments
Posted by Jake of 8bitjoystick.com 2003.05.04, 16:57
It took me a while to make a background pattern that I really liked and was no to busy or to boring. It is actually my favorite design element on my site or at least the one that I proud of.
Posted by Paul Michael Smith 2003.05.04, 23:28
Yeah, I have a big archive of background patterns on my hd but I think the key is not to actually put the text directly ontop of the background pattern but a content box with a colour that complements the background pattern and then sit text inside the content box.
That is what I have done at my site (smithpaul.com) and other sites like WhatDoIKnow.org have done it really well too.
Posted by Mike 2003.05.05, 01:40
I’m still living in the old camp of ‘less is more’ (see my site for details), but I’m slowly starting to enjoy more colorful and pattern-oriented backgrounds as I visit more weblogs.
I’ve even gone so far as to implement a slightly-noticable striped pattern on my site’s background. I’m currently considering something even more daring.
Posted by Ashley 2003.05.05, 03:50
Here is a nice site for patterns. http://www.squidfingers.com/patterns/
Posted by Ashley 2003.05.05, 03:57
Ope. Should have read to the right and then I would have seen that you already know about squidfingers.
:-*
Ash
Posted by DJSUBg 2003.05.05, 09:19
Well I guess, I jumped on the bandwagon (about a week ago - http://www.turbanhead.com/mt/archives/000744.html ) before Zeldman gave his “Okay”.
Posted by Froghead 2004.03.23, 18:47
Someone who knows more pattern-sites??? I really like squidfingers.com..
Posted by bk 2006.06.01, 03:19
Does anyone know of a site that talks about how to make these patterns? I’ll probably go blind, but I’d like to try!
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