This website was hand-crafted in HTML, CSS, and Javascript by Christopher Burd.

I developed this new version in late November and early December 2009, using HTML Kit for editing code and (mostly) Photoshop for graphic effects. It was the second redesign in three months. Having given a presentation on Swiss modernist typography at ITI in mid-November, I felt I had to do something. The design may not be an especially subtle application of the Swiss modernist grid, but it solved my main aesthetic problem: how to create a graphically interesting website with (virtually) no graphics.

To the extent that I took direct inspiration from the Swiss school, this early-1960s poster by Josef Müller-Brockmann may be the source.

The colour scheme derives from a poster by the abstract artist Mary Munro. The Latin text fragment in the header is from the Noctium Atticarium libri undeviginti, printed 1515 in Venice by Aldus Manutius.

Credits

Chris Burd photo: Andrew Kielbowicz.

Thanks to Hugo Burd and Andrew Kielbowicz for their design critiques and constructive suggestions.