Design Strategy
The Spring Fling BBQ is an annual event hosted by a community service organization at my high school. The students grill hamburgers and hot dogs and entertain senior citizens. I wanted to combine the themes of a barbecue and spring. My design solution was to turn condiment bottles into flower vases. I drew the flowers with the pen tool and applied different effects in Photoshop to give them a sketched appearance.
Choice of Typefaces
Autobahn Tomatica is a font I found online (http://www.autobahn.nl/graphic_design/ autobahn_graphic_design_shop.php). The Autobahn designers traced Helvetica font in ketchup, which fit my theme perfectly. You obviously cannot tell by looking at it that it was drawn in ketchup, but its holes in the lettering mirror the flowers well. I repeated the font in the navigation bar. For my body text, I used the sans serif font ITC Avante Garde Gothic STD in Medium weight because it has large counters, tall x-heights, minimal contrast and wide kerning. My computer classes taught me that these traits are ideal for reading on a computer display.
The “BBQ Butterfly,” as I call it, is two “B’s” in Autobahn Tomatica. I reflected one “B” so their spines would touch. I used the pen tool to draw antennas and a dotted trail.
Color
My color theme was condiments. The mustard yellow is R=243 G=225 B=0, and the ketchup red is R=217 G=61 B=61. The green is a pop of pastel color, R=153 G=206 B=151.
Images
Members of Interact Club took all the photographs, except of the condiment bottles (http://www.equippers.com/images/inventory/) and of the elderly woman on the Guests link (http://impactnews.com/central-austin/277-dining/6605-the-pit-barbeque).
Great job with this project! I always enjoy looking at your designs, not only are they aesthetically enticing, but also very functional in communication. I love your choice of colors for this particular design. I feel that you have great control of all your elements, especially your visuals of the condiment bottles. They give your layout very strong gestalt, that of course is consistent throughout all your pages. Another thing I find very effective is the borders you created around your content. This frames the information very nicely and directs the readers attention to what is important, rather than having to scrounge. One thing I might suggest is maybe playing a little more with your style of fonts. Perhaps increasing the weight of important information to give more contrast. For example, a good place you might use a heavier weight would be on your "contact us"--the beginning line. Also the line right before the twitter/facebook icon might be another place to consider. Overall you controlled your text and visuals very nicely--not to mention how inviting your your website is! Great job!
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