[Slice]

In your opinion, what makes a website look modern? What are the contributing factors to making a "modern" website?

I've just started on a job for a local, very small, cricket club. They want a cricket theme, which is modern (to attract younger members).

Five hours of design and I've got nothing. Everything I do looks cheap.

So turning to google, I looked for other cricket websites. This is one of the more modern ones: ecb.co.uk but it doesn't really have a cricket theme, just more of a modern design.

So if you were working with a themed design, what would you do to make it look more modern?

[Martyr2]

Modern they mean web 2.0ish... rounded corners on boxes, nice gradients, soft feel, a design that can breathe with whitespace etc. Such designs you should look at are facebook, twitter, etc. Notice how they are easy on the eyes, use nice color palettes and the page has a great flow.

The subject matter isn't necessarily what they mean by modern, you can make anything look modern just by giving it a design like mentioned above.

Hope that helps.

[no2pencil]

Interactivity.

[Lemur]

Keep it simple. Pick a bold color scheme and use a primarily white background. Use the colors as minimalist accents to highlight sections of the page and use only a few images. The goal of being modern is to have a large impact with a little shot.

Look into some minimalist designs. Be warned though, this is not an easier method of design. Minimalist is one of the hardest to successfully create. You must have a good working knowledge of typography, page layout, and other structural elements that will make your page simple to the untrained eye, but an effective architectural masterpiece to a designer.

Look at news papers for inspiration on layouts, but increase the white space in most all cases, also avoid force justify.

Make sure you purchase high quality stock images for use on the site. 3-4 bold stock images with driving power are far more effective than multiple cheap images they may have taken and given to you as a demonstration.

The goal of modern is to be bold without throwing a circus. If the page looks like a crayon box was smashed on it you're doing it wrong.

Look into Adobe Kuler, it will help with some basic ideas, but if you get good enough stock photos you can base a site on it as well.

[Slice]

Thanks for all the pointers guys.

You've pretty much summed up modern perfectly, but how do I integrate something like cricket into a modern design?

One of them suggested a cricket ball in place of an "O" in the name, and I said I would have to see how it fitted with the design as to not hurt her feelings (she was very old). But to me, designs like that look cheap.

In fact, most people at the club are 40+ and most of them are very old fashioned.

So when they say cricket theme, I think they actually want cricket images plastered all over the design whereas I would rather keep it minimal.

I'm going to make the rough draft as modern as possible and see what they think. Is it best to just tell them I know what's best and ignore their horrible design ideas or would you do it how they like it, even if it looks tacky?

[Lemur]

The client is always right, whether or not you necessarily agree with everything they say. You're going to have to work with them a lot, and I know how much that sucks.

What you could do is go vintage, considering that's found its way into quite a few modern sites.

[BenignDesign]

If they are signing the check, "modern" is whatever they think it should be.

I'd work up a couple designs - one very clean, slick, modern, minimal. Another more vintage, perhaps venturing slightly into the grunge realm. Get their feedback on the two. If they seem to be leaning toward one layout or the other, trust that you're on the right track and work with them on modifications. If neither suits, scrap them both and go with something more standard and traditional.

The bottom line: never get too attached to your own work. To you, it's art. To them, it's money.

[Jessi Ray]

When I think of modern I think of a design that uses no more than 4 colors, one of those being a neutral color that's primarily used in the design... such as white, gray, black, or sometimes brown.

Sharp, clean lines... shiny features. Avoid gradients or use them minimally.
Use nice menus, a small animated feature can add a lot to your design. I small detailed feature, such as the background on the example website, can benefit a modern design.

Just remember, less is more. Don't make it too gauty.

[Slice]

Lemur, on 05 April 2011 - 07:41 AM, said:

The client is always right, whether or not you necessarily agree with everything they say.

BenignDesign, on 05 April 2011 - 09:46 AM, said:

The bottom line: never get too attached to your own work. To you, it's art. To them, it's money.

My biggest flaw. I think I need to work on not getting so attached to these jobs.

[Lemur]

Don't worry about it, it's also the hardest part for any new designer to learn as well.