Using courier font. Curiosity got the best of me after reading a few posts on design blogs about Times New Roman actually being a nice font to use.

I agreed. And then thought if the same could be true to Courier. Yes, I know. I know. But hear me out.

There’s an appropriate use for any font, really (except maybe Comic Sans). It all depends on context and medium. Courier may not be an attractive choice for web design however I thought of using it for the redesign of my comic site, superspud.com. It could be a good fit for what I envisioned.

But… why yellow?

I have to admit, breaking design conventions for font use gave me an appetite for committing digital fashion crimes. Yellow has always been a difficult and unattractive colour for me in web design. It’s not as pleasing as white, grey or blue.

Can I make it beautiful?

For this to work, I decided to use a larger font size than usual in order to prevent the colour from being in your face. That complemented my other plans for not using any sidebars or side navigations. Yes, superspud.com is my experiment in “breaking” conventional design and information architecture yet keeping usability a priority.

And offering something original in the design. I’ll simply list what the comics are about and adding icons representing words. Like Highlights.

Other information such as an About Us page is in the footer. Not much needs to be said anyway since I can link to my portfolio site.

Twitter integration

A previous pre-courier font madness mock up for superspud.com was centered around my experiment with taking in suggestions for comics from Twitter. I slaved over it and in the end I just wasn’t happy. It looked too much like any other site. I wanted to create something different. Unexpected.

So, yellow it is!

My Twitter plan was to receive suggestions via, well, Twitter for a blind date for Spud, the main character in my comics. I then design female characters based on submissions that I like and draw a comic of their date.

So for the yellow site, I also placed this Twitter feature in the footer. Part of design thinking is feasibility. I just don’t have the time I wish I had to devote to drawing comics yet I really want to try my Twitter idea. Putting it at the bottom, keeps it a little out of focus, makes incoming Twitter flood (hopefully) to a minimum (hopefully) thus putting emphasis on reading the comics. Because of scrolling, changes in font size and empty space, readers will still see the Twitter section— just not cluttering up the sides or top of the website.

Another reason for this is I’m a fan of letting superspud.com visitors discover things. Not from burying content, but through their experience with the site. In this case, it’s a simple homepage that scrolls as the user scans through comic descriptions. It’s kind of like scanning titles along a book shelf but vertically. Then finding out that you, too, can influence future Spud comics.

What do you think?

Let me know your thoughts on the outcome of my digital fashion crime. Too yellow? Unforgiveable font choice?