Shrine Layouts, Symbols, and Styles, Oh My!

Talk with others about anything shrine-related, be it presentation, content or something else.
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Robin
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Shrine Layouts, Symbols, and Styles, Oh My!

Post by Robin »

Note: This arose out of a lively discussion on the Discord Amassment #general chat, in which dubiousdisc came up with the idea for this topic. Thank you, dubs!! :heart:

When you create your shrine layouts, do you find yourself gravitating toward real-life visual symbols and/or themes that fit your subject matter? (For instance, I used moon and cloud imagery in my Clefairy shrine's layout, even though those two things don't necessarily scream "Pokemon" or "gaming"--I used them because they fit the mood and general idea of Clefairy instead.)

Also, do you find yourself consistently drawn to certain symbols, themes, or aesthetics when designing shrine layouts in general? (For instance, do your layouts always feature geometric shapes of some sort, are the designs generally made up of big blocks of color, or do you find a way to work in buildings or animals, etc?) Would you say that this imagery has become part of your style?
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dubiousdisc
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Re: Shrine Layouts, Symbols, and Styles, Oh My!

Post by dubiousdisc »

(thank you Robin for posting this :D)

I always try to match my layouts to the mood of my subject, but, since I'm not good with putting lots of elements and textures, I do so with colors, shapes and typography. For example, in my Mordecai shrine, I made everything brown and sandy and a bit grungy to go with the aesthetic of Borderlands, and used fonts that looked kinda wildwesty. Most of my Quake III sites literally feature the color #b1000d (I'm still amused that it IS a dark red). The old layout for my Sneasel shrine featured slashes in the headers for a similar reason. I... I guess my aesthetic is puns.

Style-wise, or whatever I'd call it, I think I tend to go for large and clean. Large images, large fonts, large content areas. I like large. It's easy on my eyes.
I like to include graphical shapes in my designs like circles, arrows, diamonds, shit like that... Usually there's something animated in my designs. And I always do shit with fixed backgrounds or parallax or what have you. Everything else, I try to vary as much as possible. Any color will do!

I don't know if it's really a style, though...
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Tara
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Re: Shrine Layouts, Symbols, and Styles, Oh My!

Post by Tara »

I think I tend to gravitate towards certain colours that fit the subject matter usually; for example, my newest Tharja layout is very dark and purple to fit with her, and most of my shrines layouts follow suit with that idea--I usually rely on the image I use with colour but sometimes I branch out and use different colours but it's not often. (Yukari's layout is an example of when I try to diverge from using the image and/or subject's main colour.) I also try to use fonts and textures that fit with the mood of the subject. I do tend to find I use a lot of flowery textures, but that's mainly because most of my shrines are to females and I like to make them more feminine with PRETTY FLOWERS.

Style-wise, I can say now that my layouts tend to always be very large. Older layouts are kind of small on my bigger monitors, but everything recent has been made large to be easier on the eyes and just overall easier to read. I've kind of gone through a bit of a style change with my layouts now that I've navigated away from tables layouts. :swt: I also tend to feature fonts from the main design in the css. I can't think of any real shapes or anything I use consistently... but I do favour round shapes! I also tend to mess wit the opacity of my inserted images, though that is also something I've been gravitating away from recently.
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Re: Shrine Layouts, Symbols, and Styles, Oh My!

Post by Stefi »

I mentioned it in the chat, but many of my past layouts have some kind of flower or floral design on it! I had no real reason to put it there most of the time except to balance the layout, but it was something I started doing when trying to define my own style.

These days, I'm making an effort to be more minimalist with my designs because they've been so busy in the past. It's a challenge to work with negative space, clean lines, and solid shapes, but a lot of fun! I've never made a real effort into trying to represent my character in my layouts (oops lol), but I will say that the music I'm listening to has a real influence on how the design turns out.
dubiousdisc
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Re: Shrine Layouts, Symbols, and Styles, Oh My!

Post by dubiousdisc »

Stefi wrote:but I will say that the music I'm listening to has a real influence on how the design turns out.
That's super interesting! I'd like to hear more about how exactly, if you'd like to share? :D
Robin
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Re: Shrine Layouts, Symbols, and Styles, Oh My!

Post by Robin »

@Stefi: Omg yes if I design while listening to music, it always impacts my layouts too! *high five music buddies*

For my designs, I generally end up pulling the color scheme from the main image of the site, and pretty much neglecting to use images anywhere else unless it's a background texture. (Images are harder for me to work around and text is my forte, soooo... ^_^;) Also, I try very hard to match the font with the subject matter as well, especially since I discovered the magic of Google Fonts (<3 x infinity)!

As for aesthetics? I apparently like color gradients, easy to find navigation (whether it scrolls on the side or at the top), and centered things, as well as very readable text whenever possible. Other than that I'm pretty much open to whatever the particular site needs in terms of design. xD
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