Manji Spotlight: 2 With Spirit
It’s been a while since I posted one of these, and this is definitely not a slant on all you beautiful people that have been slaving away on your superb Manji designs it’s just that this one as I’m sure you’ll agree truely does deserve a mention.
It belongs to Catonya and Rick, however it was designed by Lisa Fahrmeyer from Cafelisa. From her website it’s clear that Lisa has a distinct style to her work, and that’s something that’s a rare thing on the internet. To have a style that people associated you with. Lisa seems to be of an illustration background and that mentality shows. As illustrators you spend years trying to find your voice. I guess the same can be said of graphic and web design in general.
Lisa has fully embraced all my quirky little requests in absolute style. Letters Apart flavored Manji. She’s even gone and given the line that the design was based on the Manji code. Not necessary but I’m truely honoured you’d put the entire line in there.
It breaks out of the box. It’s a great little touch and brings forward the feel of an old letter brought into the modern age in style. It’s really the attention to detail that I truely love about this design. Also from what I’ve seen around the net, she’s the only one along with Paul who’s customised the edit buttons, and in both cases they do a magnificent job of these. I know how hard it is to come up with something nice for those areas, as I struggled enough to get the Manji default up and running.
Takes a bit to get used to as all the writing is italic, however having said that think about the letters of days gone past, everything was done in a caligraphic nature. Italic is the only way of achieving the desired effect. It’s obvious what the font selection is trying to convey here.
Makes it look easy doesn’t she. I mean colour selection can be one of the hardest most painful processes a web design goes through. So much is said by the colours you choose. Great colour combination.
Man when I saw this I just had the biggest smile on my face. Fantastic work Lisa.
Hi. I’m Catonya.
I want to thank you for spotlighting Lisa’s beautiful design. I found her site, http://www.CafeLisa.com through CSS Beauty and knew immediately I wanted her to design 2withspirit. From a very sketchy idea of my hopes for 2withspirit, she designed something more beautiful than I ever dreamed. So intuitive that what you see now is exactly as it was the first time I saw it, not one thing could be improved upon. Now that is the true definition excellence in design. I could fill this box and it wouldn’t begin to describe my gratitude or admiration for her or her work. A gifted designer, artist, and truly awesome person. kudos Lisa.
thank you khaled for recognizing her work.
19/1/2005
Thank you so much for your incredibly kind words. It is so flattering to hear such kindness from people whom I admire so much.
Thank you Khaled for taking the time so say so much. I feel the same way about your work. It is absolutely incredible and I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Manji to the point that I believe that the new version of CafeLisa will be a Manji flavor as well. Your code is so clean and the implementation so elegant, I am thrilled to have had this opportunity to work with it. You are very talented and your kind words mean a very great deal to me.
And, to Catonya, Well, she is a dream to work with! An exceptional person and a wonderfully artistic soul. I feel lucky to have been asked to do this design and to have had the opportunity to get to know her. Her “gratitude and admiration” is returned in kind.
Thank you both!
19/1/2005
Very nice! Love the colours and the atmosphere.
20/1/2005
No thank you girls for giving us such a cool design. Thanks for the words Lisa, I’m really glad to hear the code didn’t disappoint. After Root left that was my main worry, that I would scupper the code.
Thanks for sharing. Really looking forward to your next design.
20/1/2005
Ahhhh look at all the love going on here, of course it is warranted. Beautiful work on your flavour Lisa, very inspired.
20/1/2005
I speak as someone who had the privilege of hacking about in the code in the early stages of the manji development. Credits are one thing. But I find it enormously satisfying to see someone take something that is good already and then extend it further. That seems to be the way art grows and develops.
I am in awe of all you creative types. If any of us can capture that perfect art / code synergy - we may get the chance to turn out some decent designs. That is the fun of it. Good luck to everybody.
4/3/2005