Courtney Sheinmel’s so-called website

There’s a new website on the block: author Courtney Sheinmel, whose novel My So-Called Family debuts in the fall, commissioned me to design and produce her site. We launched last night.

The creative brief was fun and a challenge. We chose to draw inspiration for the design from something meaningful of Courtney’s: her grandmother’s china.

Of course this wasn’t translated literally–I aimed for a mood and a bit of old-fashioned elegance. The gilding on the teacup became the outlines of the content areas, headlines, initial caps and logomark. The row of dots along the rim of the cup, reminiscent of egg-and-dart moldings, became the pattern that trims the top and bottom of the page. The green accent color, so felicitously also the dominant color in the bookjacket, became a unifying element: