Web Design Examples - Edinburgh Chess Club

The current Edinburgh Chess Club site grew out of an earlier one that had been hosted on the James Thin server for a number of years and had gone through various designs as browser capabilities developed, but had remained largely text-based. The move to a new domain gave me a chance to undertake a complete redesign and rewrite of the content. Having written a number of articles about the club's history I decided to expand on this aspect and use photographs for the first time.

I had been looking at layers-based flyout menus for a while and it was on this site that I developed them fully. The site has a large number of pages in various different categories so it is ideally suited for this type of menu. The club logo was a suitable size to position above the menu and its use was felt sufficient to take care of branding requirements, allowing maximum space for information.

The subject matter lends itself to the use of a subtle tiled background image and the colours chosen are generally light and airy to contrast with the rather old-fashioned image that the second-oldest chess club in the world inevitably has. This allowed me to concentrate the photos on the most photogenic aspects of the club which are the old prints, trophies and images of early 20th century players which decorate the clubroom walls, without the site becoming too dark and museum-like.