Improve Look and Feel

[KlaasYK]

After consulting the UI/UX designed in our team he came up with the following points:

• Prefer a darker theme (which seems more common on astronomical websites)
• Remove the underline on links (which makes it look very dated)
• Change the font to use something like Inter: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Inter (but any modern font would do)
• Add some more colour, for example under the Category titles
• The IVOA logo seems to complex (lot's of detail)

He also made a quick mock-up in his design tool (ignore the login part):

[msdemlei]

On Fri, Feb 09, 2024 at 03:17:21AM -0800, Klaas Kliffen wrote:

• Remove the underline on links (which makes it look very dated)

Frankly, I feel weighing "follow fashion" versus "make sense" (clearly marking where you can click) should always prefer "makes sense".

So, my vote is to have underlined links (outside of menus and similar, where clickability is implied).

[gmantele]

I personally really like it :1st_place_medal: . I prefer this version compared to the current prototype. Maybe the logo + title "IVOA" are a bit too dark compared to the background, and so, not enough contrasted (might be an issue to visually impaired persons).

[JeremyMcCormick]

How do we precede from this mock-up to layout/stylesheets/etc.?

I think this was done with Figma, so is it possible to export any useable assets from it?

I personally like this as an initial design to start.

[JeremyMcCormick]

On Fri, Feb 09, 2024 at 03:17:21AM -0800, Klaas Kliffen wrote: * Remove the underline on links (which makes it look very dated) Frankly, I feel weighing "follow fashion" versus "make sense" (clearly marking where you can click) should always prefer "makes sense". So, my vote is to have underlined links (outside of menus and similar, where clickability is implied).

I don't think we should initially get caught up on this or other relatively minor design decisions that are easy to change later. Whether links are underlined or not can be changed with a trivial update to the stylesheet.

It does seem to me that such issues, even if seemingly minor, should be decided upon by a broad group within the organization based on feedback. But we can just make some initial decisions in order to progress with the design. I personally prefer no underlining, as it looks more modern and clean, but I would accept either style.

[JeremyMcCormick]

I would change:

"Deployers/Developers" -> "For Developers"

"Members section" -> "For Members"

"Astronomers" -> "For Astronomers"

"About IVOA" -> "About the IVOA"

"Login" -> The site has no login capability of which I'm aware so this shouldn't be there unless this is added as a feature.

Possibly make the large "IVOA" characters solid white? Outlined characters looks strange to me.

[JeremyMcCormick]

The IVOA logo seems to complex (lot's of detail)

I actually like the current logo and don't think it is too complicated.

Though I do wonder if the color scheme will look good on a dark background. The outline is black, for instance, and this will be obscured against a similarly colored background like the one here.

[JeremyMcCormick]

Would the page links on the bottom be more visible if the text was white?

The NASA site has a dark background with white text throughout. Light blue on dark blue is a little bit hard to read.

NASA also has grey on black for other text. Maybe this would look good for headings instead of white?