Well, the first thing to say about Just Watch the Sky is that it’s beautiful: a glorious mix of colour, precise typography and quirky language, a breathtakingly simple idea, executed perfectly. I’m not sure where it would sit on the simple/complex/ordered line, and I guess it doesn’t really matter.
The second thing to say is that it isn’t really web design, but I’ll come on to that. As a source of inspiration for people who write web pages it’s invaluable, because it’s freed from the constraints of the normal web page structure.
Muted colours, Swiss typography: from Point A to Point B
When I see this page it makes me think about new ideas: really big font sizes, the mix of muted green and red, how to style an ordered list, saying a lot with a handful of words. or even using language in original ways.
Even better, I love the way in which some of the pages marry form and content so artfully:
Lyric from White Winter Hymnal, by Fleet Foxes
The cool blue sets an appropriately wintry tone, while the truncated I was following the… refrain is repeated just as it is at the beginning of the song, forming a repetitive lullaby. The completed refrain is set in a large, red font that literally punctures the cosiness of the ryhthm (note the dot in the i and the stem in the k splitting following), suggesting blood and violence, and also a betrayal of innocence. The final all swallowed in their coats is set in a sober green, complementing the cool tone established by the blue background, and serving as a contrast to the violence of the previous line: perhaps indicating that this violence is quickly assimilated into the conventional.
Neon 80s (or lurid) typography for Kanye West
And why is this not web design? Well, however well the text has been set, what we’re looking at is pictures of text, rather than text itself. Of course, the designer would not be able to control font face, dimension and transparency as well if it was plain old HTML and CSS.
Not that this matters. I for one am itching to incorporate some of these ideas into a web design.