The newly relaunched website, April 2017
Tennessee’s office of travel has released their brand new one today. What a stunner! This is just one of many nice websites they’ve put out. A new one pops up on my radar every few years as they redesign.
My first initiation to TNVacation.com was in about 2008 and their look and feel was very resonant with the American South, with a lot of true grit, denim, and heart to the brand. They were making great use of the emerging trend of nonstandard web fonts — I want to say they were using Cufon? — as well as transparent overlays. The site had a great travel and scrapbook theme going on, full of memories… The kind you might make on a vacation to their state, you could say.
You can bet your boots I screencapped it and stuck it in my inspiration folder of nice websites. That’s probably the hallmark right there of greatness, when your work is getting saved as something to aspire to. Whomever out there designed that version of the site, I salute you. And also to the designer of the current site, tip of the hat, because it is just lovely.
What’s New in Tennessee
The newly launched TNVacation continues capitalizing on web trends with big cover-to-cover images, parallax scrolling, and cdn optimized delivery. It looks like they are running on Drupal and making use of six social media outlets including Snapchat, Instagram, and Pinterest in addition to the old ‘big 3’. This time around they are sticking with heavy use of lovely imagery, all vignetted (the dark edges on each photo) for dramatic effect. The typography is now live text and it makes me think about just how far the web has come with regard to fonts over the years.
Check out the press release and official site as they are doing several sweepstakes and promotions. I’ve never been to Tennessee but they are making it quite tempting!
Professionals Make it Look Easy
For anyone wondering just how much work goes into something like this, here’s a 30,000 foot overview of the steps to build a website. This is not something one whips up in a single afternoon.
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