Modern Design

Design*Sponge is a blog that showcases cool modern home and product design, trends, design reviews and sales as well as promoting any other type of design you can think of. If you want to get the latest information on whats hot in the design world, this site has it all.


The site is run by NYC based writer Grace Bonney and has been running since 2004.

The eye candy elements of the site are made up of cool pastel and rich colours in the banner, the same colour scheme is used throughout the blog. The font of the Logo and the pebble shaped images, compliments the colourful design.

The photographs of the various products also compliments the design of the page, as they too can be seen as elements which add to the pages creativity, it's almost as if they are pieces of artwork themselves.

The square, boxed allgined composition of the page makes it readable and easy on the eye, everything is spaced pretty evenly and set out in a way that makes it easy to see. The font used for the main writing suits the blog well. It's plain and simple.

Each page has the same pastel green back ground in it which again pulls it all together and keeps it simple. The navigation at the top are clear and have the same font as the mast head, only smaller. The design sales promotions are on the right hand side of the page and there are adverts of other design products on the left hand side, ranging from designer handbags, furniture, keyrings and paintings.

I think what this site shows is that less is more. It lets the content speak for itslef. If it had a lot of graphics, I think it would look confusing and wouldn't create the minimalist composition that it exhibits.

Artistically Brilliant

When I was searching for blogs I liked, I came across a blog with a title that stood out called 'The French Toast Girl'. I thought it was a funny title so I clicked it and was immediately presented with a colourful, creative page of art work.

This blogsite is a portfolio of art in all it's forms, Abstract paintings, sketches and fine art.

The artist Elena Nazzaro is a illustrator and water colourist. This site showcases her talent in a relaxed, enjoyable and fun way. French Tast Girl- (as she calls herself) keeps her artist lover audience up to date with her work with a laid back account of what she's done, how she did it and what she plans to do next.

French Toast Girl has lovely, colourful and fun illustrations of people from different races and dream-like abstract art. She mainy focuses on the human form and expressions.
Her artwork actually reminds me of Roald Dahl illustrations, it has a very child friendly appearance and I could easily imagine these being illustrations on a childrens book.

This site is not a rigid portfolio of artwork but it's like a journal of the French Toast Girl's everyday life, as she mentions her motherly tasks when tells her readers about a page she found in a magazine, that she took advice from, which had the writing 'Be gentle with yourself'.

In the 'about' section she mentions'
'The basic philosophy of the french toast girl site is this: life (like french toast) is made up of simple ingredients that combine to make up a marvelous concoction we often take for granted. It's time to relish all the wonderful flavors in your life. And by the way, if you aren't crazy about the way your life tastes, remember: you're the one who controls how much sweetness goes on top, or if it's soggy and underdone'
I think this is a cool analogy of seeing things. It's inspirational and makes me want to get more out of life.

When I use to do Art and Design, it was a neccessity to always make a written and illustrated log of my thoughts and ideas to show my progression throughout a project. This site is kind of like an online logbook of the bloggers artwork. It's probably an online CV of her work too.

I would give this site a 9/10. It's eyecathing and inspiring, it makes me want to pick my paint brush up again. It's easy to navigate and the blogger gives the viewer external links to other works that she has done.

A creatively cool site!