WSA Winner

Rob Weychert

Cor blimey! This is getting out of hand, another site indebted to Jason Santa Maria’s iChat availability and Shaun Inman’s JavaScript shamanism. This time, the geezer at the helm is Rob Weychert, a man with big ideas, big humour and an even bigger (Donegal) beard.

With many creative site designs impemented with web standards these days, my interest in this site was not in the wonders of its XHTML or even the magic potion that is its CSS.

I had the pleasure of spending time with Rob recently and I always thought that his XXL size character needed an XXL size site to bring his XXL size personality out through the page. Has this been achieved? I'll leave you to decide. Me...?

I'm in two minds. While the style of writing and quirky content certainly represent Rob, the visual style seemed at first slightly divorced from it. Then I re-read his about page, in which he says,

I’ve always loved the densely ornate editorial layouts from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and with this project, I challenged myself to achieve a comparable charm within the much more severe typographic limitations of the web.

The site's attention to detail is spectacular and is an eclectic mix of classic and contemporary typefaces and type treatments.

So, did Rob succeed in his aims? I think so. Is the site's visual design full-on 'Rob', I'm still a little unsure. Still, who am I to judge? :)

Reviewed by Andy Clarke