Well - as you may have noticed - we’ve finally uploaded our u-beaut blog header (those of you using Firefox may have to hit ‘reload’ while holding down the shift key). We’re pretty pleased the place no longer looks like Seattle at all hours of the day and night 
Although the blog’s called ’skepticlawyer’ - my blog handle - I always liked the fabulous eagle graphic at Legal Eagle’s old blog, (an image sourced thanks to Iain Hall’s efforts). Legal Eagle is also a pretty useful artist herself, and produced the eagle graphic in this post (about her unusual take on politics). Online Opinion’s Graham Young drew my attention to the ‘claw’ witticism in ’skepticlawyer’, and we thought we’d found a way to combine blog identities in an interesting way.
We dumped all our ideas on Jacques Chester and Phineas Jones (the latter is a fabulously quirky designer I discovered via Amanda Rose’s Country Music Death Beast site, Flop Eared Mule, which he also designed). Between them, they produced the site and the artwork now decorating it. In time, we’ll add a few more little bits, and use parts of Phineas’ artwork as our gravatars. I’m especially keen to make use of some of his original sketch, which I think is a very striking bit of artwork. Phineas is American, so among other things we had to supply a heap of images of barristers to illustrate the wigs we still wear in Australia and the UK - trial lawyers in the US having long since abandoned the itchy things.
Below is Phineas’ rough for the eagle:
Phineas then got to work on the blog header, which Jacques had to build around the advertising in such a way that the two images didn’t clash. In the end we went for a less severe colour scheme than the one below, but we both still really like it. Jacques is in the process of modifying the code for the site so it’s a more consistent colour scheme (and no more purple, Kieran!). The ‘loud blue’ version:
Feedback and ideas are always welcome, of course, but we’re pretty pleased. We highly recommend patronizing Jacques and Phineas, too, for obvious reasons.
10 Comments
Yay! It is fantastic!
I’ve darkened the blue a bit, picking a colour from the header. I think it looks good. Phineas did a fantastic job with the header graphic, it looks amazing.
I really like the blue, Jacques… and yes, I agree with Kieran - I’m glad the purple’s gone. It looks fine for LP and Andrew Bartlett, but three purple political blogs would be stretching things just a little.
(Michael Dunne)
Great artwork but still abit poncey. How about going a bit more mod or crptic?
Shit…spelling always fucks me up at this time of night…& day & afternoon…
I presume you mean ‘cryptic’? Must admit I’m not very good with art that’s too experimental or conceptual. I presume LE and Jacques are similar on that score, as the artwork was very much a collective exercise. In any case, I think Club Troppo have got the ‘cryptic’ market cornered with their wriggly armadillo.
Thanks for the credit for finding LE’s old header image , amazing what you can do with a google image search
I am glad to see that the eagle used is a Wedgie though.
My only criticism is that the objects she is holding in her claws could be a little larger / more prominent because they do seem to get a bit lost in the overall graphic.
Cheers
also the part of the s that can be seen through the magnifying glass should be bigger as if magnified…
Nice look.
But what Iain said re the objects in the claws. I didn’t see ‘em until his comment directed me to look.
Adrien;
There’s discussion about integrating the magnifying glass and hammer motif into the site a bit more. Stay tuned.