We had a slow winter around here at SSDD Web Design. Other aspects of life captured our attention (family, friends, significant others, illness, travel, etc.). But the sun is shining and things are picking up.

Currently we’re working on our first ZenCart installation for a (the) local leather store, a shopping cart system for their wholesale business. Once complete we will proceed with setting up another ZenCart installation for their retail business. ZenCart is quite feature-rich and it’s been a bit of a learning curve but we’re currently loading products and should be launching soon.

In the meantime, over on the newly minted NETTUTS web site they’ve posted a nice roundup of the best of the web for April. There were some great web design and development resources posted on blogs last month, and NETTUTS is shaping up to be a “keeper” for the RSS reader.

A design aesthetic I aspire to: Super Clean

This is perhaps one of the most ambiguous and subjective categories described on Design Melt Down yet. The heart of what I mean by Super Clean is that visually speaking the entire feel of the site is super clean. To me this is somewhat of an ideal or ultimate design. Basically the sites selected for this category feel as though they are clutter free, have plenty of breathing room, have an easy to understand and clear hierarchy, and overall feel really balanced and easy to consume.

I’ve never been very good at cluttered design. When a client wants me to cram a bunch of stuff on a page, I chafe. I much rather prefer to keep it clean and, as the kids say, “Keep it real.”

8 Web Design Clichés of 2006

One thing that has persisted throught the life of the hypertext-enabled web however, is the design cliché - trends or ‘memes’ that catch on amongst a large percentage of web users. We’ve seen dancing hamsters, Animated GIFs, the <blink> tag and Netscape Navigator all come and go - but what about the more recent trends?

Well, rats, I’ve only got three on this site (gradients, diagonals and shiny floor). My personal blog only has two (gradients and diagonals). I’ll have to try harder. At least drop shadows and rounded corners dropped off the list for 2006. I’ve got little tiny drop shadows under the text on the navigation buttons. YAY WEB 1.0! Both of my sites have tags, but only as part of the blogging software, and I’m using them more as just categories; I think the article is referring more to “tag clouds.”

More from the same site:

• Web 2.0 Colour Palette
• Great Fonts for Web 2.0

(Disclaimer: the above is meant to be facetious.)

Jonathan’s Web site is gorgeous. The color scheme makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside (in stark contrast to my own site - but I’m not exactly warm and fuzzy). I especially like the clean simple lines of his blog layout.

Design Meltdown Part 2 Complete!