On Joyent.com

~ 07 October 2005 ~

In the works for some time now and finally ready for public viewing, Joyent.com was officially released earlier this week, as noted by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber.

Though a rather small site, it required the collaborative input of Bryan Bell, John Gruber, and David Young (founder). The final version looks nothing like the original comps, but hey, isn’t that usually the case? Credit goes to the three mentioned here for chipping away at the marble until the beauty within was revealed.

Two other hat tips, one to Paige Pooler and the other to Dan Cederholm. We were fortunate enough to acquire the exceptional skills of Paige Pooler for the lovely illustrations used throughout the site. In layman’s terms, her skills are wicked mad. Wait, what was that? You say she writes, too?

And Dan… Dan, Dan, Dan. Please keep your books off of my desk because they cause me to uncontrollably seek out new, more effective “bulletproof” ways of coding one’s site. I’m pleased to report that, aside from a small image in the left nav (absolutely positioned, working to fix that), the site is Kevlar vest-like in shielding itself from Command +/- resizing fiends.

Yes, I learned my lesson the last time I was pummelled for absolute font sizing.

Update

Forgot one person. I raved about Mark Simonson’s Proxima ~~Sans~~ Nova before it was even released. I knew I’d find use for it. Enter Joyent. Hello Proxima ~~Sans~~ Nova.

23 Comments

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1 Colly ~ 07 October 2005 at 10:32 AM

One word: Beautiful.

2 Dan Cederholm ~ 07 October 2005 at 10:37 AM

Wonderful job, Cameron. Joyent.com is beautiful, and I think Paige Pooler is my new favorite illustrator. Congrats to you guys.

Also, your link hover treatment rules!

3 Mike Burnard ~ 07 October 2005 at 11:06 AM

Wonderful indeed. Great illustrations, great layout, and Dan was right…I surfed the entire site looking for links to hover over because they rock so much.

Excellent product, too.

4 Nick ~ 07 October 2005 at 03:06 PM

Very nice site. I love the link hover styles (like everyone else) but I keep getting these rogue linked spaces above linked images. I’m using Firefox (1.0.6) on Mac.

But again, beautiful design! And those illustrations are amazing.

5 AkaXakA ~ 08 October 2005 at 06:57 AM

Superb styling. Fits the site’s purpose perfectly.

6 maratz ~ 10 October 2005 at 03:44 AM

Luv the illustrations!

The text sizing for IE is also very nice to see.

7 Caleb ~ 10 October 2005 at 08:24 AM

Nice site, but I’m confused on what this product actually is. Is it a web server, is it a file sharing utility, what the heck? The site does not give a clear explination of what the product is.

8 Tim ~ 10 October 2005 at 01:05 PM

Great looking site, but the nav appears to be 2px too short in IE6/Win. Looks great in Firefox though!

9 John Zeratsky ~ 10 October 2005 at 02:19 PM

That’s nice, but I’m really looking forward to hearing more about Joyent The Product. So far, it’s just a web site!

10 Steve Weintraub ~ 11 October 2005 at 07:52 AM

Joyent is nicely designed, but I continue to wonder why designers still use orange, the single most cliche and overused color for the past 5-6 years running.

11 Cameron Moll ~ 11 October 2005 at 09:30 AM

I’d have to argue blue nudges out orange, and yet for some reason most of us refrain from using “blue” and “cliche” in the same sentence…

12 Steve Weintraub ~ 11 October 2005 at 10:13 AM

I disagree; blue is far too ubiquitous and natural for that. The sky is blue, water is (perceived as) blue, the spectrum blue-shifts, blue jeans, etc.

Orange is great, its eye-catching and all that, but it just seems that designers just lazily use orange these days because it’s easy and trendy. Heck, you link to Stylegala: orange, which links to your own english360: also orange (which also has one of those trendy “blob” logos, but I doubt that’s your doing).

I can’t walk down the street without seeing orange, either; Cingular, Better Burger, I could go on. But I guess I won’t, I’m probably the only person in the universe with this nitpick.

13 Cameron Moll ~ 11 October 2005 at 11:10 AM

Steve, I’m not entirely clear as to what your point is. You argue orange is cliche. You argue blue is natural. What exactly are you suggesting in relation to Joyent.com?

14 Cameron Moll ~ 11 October 2005 at 11:30 AM

Shifting gears, some of you have written to notify me of blank links in Firefox above Experience/Explore/Purchase. I’m on it — thanks for the heads up.

15 Steve Weintraub ~ 11 October 2005 at 01:03 PM

Well, I was only trying to argue that blue isn’t a cliche color; I wasn’t suggesting anything relative to Joyent beyond my initial observation. But to stick on topic, I’ll ask: what made you choose orange/cream colors for Joyent? Is there color psychology at play here, just what you thought looked nice, or the wife of an investor saying “Make it thus!” ? I’m over the orange argument, I’m just curious about the process

16 Cameron Moll ~ 11 October 2005 at 01:32 PM

Fair enough. Things would get rather interesting around here if I told you the first few comps were nearly all blue…

(they actually were; the final color scheme was merely one that “felt” right and seemed to complement the orange from the identity rather nicely)

17 Steve Weintraub ~ 11 October 2005 at 01:45 PM

Ah ok, so you sort of worked backwards from the existing logo. Ironically, I see that their app UI is mostly grey/blues (Civil War buffs?).

18 Dennis West ~ 11 October 2005 at 03:28 PM

I recently became familiar with Paige Pooler’s work. She’s great! I really like the illustrations used on the Joyent site. Thanks for letting me know who did them. Funny how I’ve just heard of her and here she turns up again. It must be the web circles i’m linking in right now.

19 richard ~ 11 October 2005 at 06:44 PM

Great color selection and layout. I especially like the clean lines and sense of perspective the “mini-photos” give tho the design.

20 Alain ~ 12 October 2005 at 05:19 PM

Some nice design features in the site. Love the faint pillow embossing on the page titles, as well as the illustrations - awesome! I’ve only looked at it in IE6, but in that browser the left hand nav is kind of funky when resizing the text, especially larger. When resizing to largest, a thin brown bar also appears at the top of the page. Silly details.

21 Dean ~ 13 October 2005 at 07:54 AM

Is anyone else having trouble viewing the demo movies? In both Firefox and IE - the popup window locks up and throws an error on the Quicktime Plugin.

I’m on XP Pro with the latest updates (including the new Quicktime releases yesterday).

I’d love to “see” the product!

22 Dennis West ~ 19 October 2005 at 11:34 AM

I know I already left a comment about Paige Pooler’s work, I just needed to do one more thing:

you’ve been tagged!

23 jr ~ 25 October 2005 at 10:26 AM

Joyent is great