Just launched: a redesigned site for talented Chicago magician David Solomon. David has worked with some of the best card magic talents in the business and has a kindly patter that totally disguises his skills at sleight-of-hand. He has books and DVDs that will show you how he does it, but nothing quite matches experience and he has plenty.

The design brief:

As I began to work on this project, I was struck by how under-served magicians on the web actually are. There are a lot of ugly, 90s-style websites out there, that do nothing to combine the magic of the web today with their magical subjects. David has been gracious enough to let me begin to correct that, starting with this total redesign of DavidSolomon.net. 

Dave, now retired, was a professional printer, and had some beautiful line art already created for his books and DVD covers. Unlocking those old Illustrator files wasn’t easy, but I was able to adapt the beautiful Kings-and-Queens borders into an arresting background for the new site. The warm tans, ambers and maroons of the site derived quite naturally from the the covers, as well.

Although it would have been tempting to create a lot of Flash and other animated effects for the site, I found that the content needed little more than some subtle javascript show-and-hide and some thoughtful arrangement. Dave’s own voice and expertise gives the site all the charm and gravitas it needs.