NYOA Site Design Ideas

I’m actually weirdly excited about working on this and realize that there are probably only a few people who might even be vaguely interested in what I’m doing here but, as the age old saying goes “If someone blogs in the woods and no ones around read it, does it even matter?” or something like that. On to design!

I was looking at design templates for WordPress and all of the templates I found felt like they were designed to try and sell you something. They all felt a little too slick and modern to effectively represent this loosely knitted community of older boat enthusiasts.

Although looking at some of the other owner associations pages, they felt like they were built in 1995. Nothing wrong with 1995 we’ve just come a long way in terms of web design since then.

The challenge is how do you capture the essence of something that was built in the 80s with out making a website that feels like it was built in the 80’s. I don’t have an answer yet but I’ve been looking at old copies of cruising world from that period and I think there’s a lot of great design concepts that can be reapplied.

I’m not a designer and don’t have any real expertise in this stuff but I do really appreciate the look and feel of some of these brochures and boating magazine ads coming out at that time and feel like it could be good inspiration for this site.

I realize the purpose of this site isn’t a design exercise but at the same time I feel like the site should have a look and feel that brings you back and pays homage to to the period when these ships we’re built.

I’m sure there are people that will read this and think what is this guy smoking. And the truth is I’m “naturally high”

Feedback comments & suggestions welcome 🙂