Three Columns with Content First

The majority of fresh three-column site designs that have been produced lately have put the content first. By first, I mean they’re locating the content on the far left of the display.

Figure 1.28: Putting content first at Vivabit.com

Although this isn’t really a new idea, it’s been picking up a lot of steam lately in both liquid- and fixed-width site designs. The majority of three-column layouts usually switch to a two-column structure outside the homepage. By placing the content on the left, the transition from three columns to two is more natural, as the content column can simply expand, rather than having to relocate completely. For example, if you visit any of the other main pages of the Vivabit site, the width of the content area seems simply to expand up and to the right when you navigate from the homepage into the site.

See also:

Veerle’s Blog, at http://veerle.duoh.com/

Django, at http://www.djangoproject.com/

Expansive Footer Navigation

If you scroll to the bottoms of pages on many of the most recently redesigned sites, you’re likely to see an interesting new trend. Rather than using the footer for main links and a copyright notice, many sites are expanding this neglected piece of page real estate to include contact information, expanded site navigation, and extra content such as blogrolls, linkrolls, Flickr badges, and so on. Although putting a site’s main navigational element at the bottom of the page isn’t a good idea, the concept of including “bonus” navigation and content in that space has taken off lately. As Figure 1.27 shows, JeffCroft.com is just one of the sites trying this approach.

Figure 1.27: Presenting extra content in the footer at JeffCroft.com

See also:

City Church, at http://www.thecity.org/

Powazek, at http://www.powazek.com/

Fresh Branding, at http://www.freshbranding.co.uk/

Fresh Trends

If you’re feeling so overwhelmed by the above resources that you can’t even contemplate starting a morgue file for inspiration, just take a few minutes to browse through those sites. Look past the colors and textures to the boxes that make up the layout, and try to identify Common ideas and design trends. By doing this, I’ve started to notice a few trends that seem to be emerging in web site layouts.