Spun

Happened upon this personal site by Garrett Murray today, via torrez, and found the design really inspiring. I love sites with a dark background and light text - so much easier to read. I like how there’s lots of empty space but that navigation links appear when you rollover the post and titles, wondering what’s what. I used to dog Ruby on Rails sites for always having the same look - the big headlines, certain font families and colors. I don’t know if it’s the default style in the Rails view templates or the fact that Rails fans are influenced by 37 Signals or what - but Maniacal Rage doesn’t. Just looking at it I couldn’t tell what CMS or platform publishes it which is rare with most blogs. (Give it a try - lots of TypePad, WordPress, MT, RoR and Blogger sites are identifiable by style.)
Bonus: there’s no drop shadow or rounded corners, which are really getting on my nerves lately. *stares at drop shadows on this page*
Anyway, if I were a designer, this is the kind of site I’d want to create. It’s got my wheels turning about my sad, poor, bare scribbling.net.