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Showdown Series (Season One): Week 9
07. Sep, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
New week = new Showdown. But since our IE6 post seemed to hijack all of the comments & votes last week, we decided that we’ll keep last week’s Showdown live, along with a new Showdown this week. So please do vote & comment on both, as both weeks’ modifications are incredible.
This week we’re featuring two modifications of our incredibly popular free theme – Irresistible – which has had more than 20K downloads since it was released. And for this battle we’ve picked two diverse contestants in Palo Verde Lodge and Tony Joe White, which means that you’ll have a tough time once again to choose the ultimate winner… Ready, set… Go!
Palo Verde Lodge – Link
Palo Verde Lodge
Our first impression of Palo Verde Lodge’s website is “We definitely want to go there!”. Oh… And the fact that it’s only upon close inspection that we can really see that the design is based on Irresistible (which you know by now is something we love seeing from our Showdown contestants).
Irresistible was originally designed to work with a variety of backgrounds, as the content uses transparency, which makes the theme endlessly flexible. Palo Verde Lodge uses this feature of the design to perfection with a very nice photo of the lodge itself, which fades & blends into a great fusion of different elements.
Where this design however really shines (for us anyway), is the combination of custom graphics & videos which serves to highlight the different, individual elements. Small things – like the Flickr Gallery – definitely gives the design a very well-rounded feel and it is obvious that the developers spent quite a bit of time figuring out what kind of content & multimedia will draw the most visitors.
Overall we’re very impressed with the design and even though it fades a little to the footer (which isn’t as awesome as the rest of the design), it definitely uses enough custom content & design modifications to make this a superb entry in the first season of the Showdown!
Tony Joe White – Link
Tony Joe White
Tony Joe White is a musician and judging by the combination of design styles on his website, we’d bet that his music is probably also an eclectic fusion of different musical sources.
Similarly to Palo Verde Lodge, Tony Joe White uses the background + transparency effect to great success and we’re in love with the eerie / mystical forest background used within the design. The background is however greatly offset by the cowboy / Western-like font used for the logo, which creates that sense that this is a fusion of multiple design styles. Does it work? We think “Hell yeah!”.
The most notable difference from Tony Joe White is that the developers decided to ditch the standard content + right sidebar approach in favour of a full-width content column. We think that on most pages (like the homepage) this works incredibly well, but some other pages (eg. the Videos page) would’ve read a little better if it had a sidebar. But that’s just us nitpicking…
We are also impressed with the integration of a shopping cart / store, which we haven’t seen on many of the designs we’ve featured in the Showdown’s first season; so big kudo’s to Tony Joe White for incorporating that.
In the end, we love this design, because it does what it’s supposed to day (promote Tony Joe White and sell his music), whilst also looking great. The fact that a musician can run a “business” based on a free WordPress theme, just makes it even cooler… 
Over to you… What do you think of these designs? We think there’s a clear winner and whilst we expect it to be a closely-fought battle, we’d still be hesitant to put our money on this ending in a draw. Lucky for us though, is that we get to sit on the fence and just observe how you comment & vote… So get to it already…
WINNER! In the battle of mankind vs animal, Palo Verde Lodge has completely smacked the cowboy, Tony Joe White, out of the ring with a massive 72% beating. We’re just silently contemplating who at the lodge will be wearing the WooTee… Maybe that monkey(-thing) on the front page?
22 Responses to “Showdown Series (Season One): Week 9”
7 September 2009 at 8:21 am #
A vote for Palo Verde Lodge
7 September 2009 at 10:53 am #
Likewise, seems more visually appealing to me, just my 2 cents thought. Both are great looking sites.
7 September 2009 at 11:09 am #
I’m not wild about either site. I think both of them have legibility issues. I hate light body type on dark backgrounds. I also don’t like it when a background image competes with the content.
If either site had done something to differentiate the body copy area from the backgrounds, I would like them both a lot more.
I’m reluctant to criticize the hard work put in by both site designers, but it’s not my favorite week in the showdown series.
I DO like the logo in the Tony Joe White site and think the site has potential, just not there yet for me. Ditto for Palo Verde.
7 September 2009 at 1:22 pm #
Palo Verde for me too
7 September 2009 at 1:46 pm #
Me too. Nicer typography was mainly what did it for me.
7 September 2009 at 2:58 pm #
I’m in agreement with Leslie on every point.
Palo Verdes is better overall and more legible… but I’m still not a fan. The dark gradients ruin the tropical mood. Combine the green gradient on the large logo font at the top, and you’ve almost got a horror theme.
Both themes could really use some lightening up.
7 September 2009 at 3:23 pm #
I am surprised at some of the opinions expressed above. While I typically don’t like dark sites either, I’ve totally fallen in love with the Palo Verde theme design. Just like you guys, I want to go there! I would love to use that exact design for my personal blog and, of course, change the background image. I really love the transparency!
7 September 2009 at 5:19 pm #
Palo Verde gets my vote. I actually like the head of Tony Joe’s site more, but the text is very hard to read on the opaque background and there just isn’t anything to the site.
7 September 2009 at 8:58 pm #
Yeah.. both are too graphic intensive for me.. But if I had to pick one, I voted for Palo Verde Lodge
7 September 2009 at 9:05 pm #
Good original take off from the original theme by the Palo Verde site. Competing elements is not necessarily disturbing to the overall site information. I may have a different opinion about site content competing for attention which makes it an inline competition rather then an external competition. Competing elements either make for a longer time spend on the site or the desire to have anther look. both in my opinion are desirable traits. The concepts are very different yet the contrast in Palo Verde is far more superior than the Tony Joe White theme which washes out and thus blends much more with the background. Personally i’m not a fan of the static background which makes orientation on where I’m at within the site difficult without checking the scrollbar for bearings (halfway, almost at the end?). Without a doubt Palo Verde has my vote, based on ecstatic, typography use and the use of multiple multimedia facets.
The Palo Verde site is a CMS system site while the Tony Joe White theme is more of a blog site. This makes comparing both sites incompatible.
8 September 2009 at 1:10 am #
Wanting to stay on a site longer because you can’t figure out what’s going on (too many competing elements and/or lack of legibility) is not a good thing.
For a page to move you along to a call of action, you want focused attention and accessibility.
I’m not specifically nit-picking on these sites – speaking more in general terms – but I do think with a little more attention to legibility they would be winners.
7 September 2009 at 9:49 pm #
I had to go back and look one more time after I decided to vote for Tony Joe White and saw all of the comments praising the other one. Whew… I thought Palo Verde looked busy and kinda legolike while Tony’s site was clean, very artistic and eerie. I liked the transparent type and was surprised to realize that it was very readable. Oh well, just goes to show we have different taste…
8 September 2009 at 7:41 am #
Graphically, I liked both mods. I voted for Palo Verde because the entire site seemed to be more finished to me and overall, the content was very well linked and congruent.
The content on Tony Joe White has some great potential, but as an example, I couldn’t find a way to play demos of his music there at all. As well, I clicked on the Buy Now banners many times but they don’t link out to anything. It may be that Tony Joe White’s site is just not quite complete yet. Or it may be that the focus was on the look instead of the content. Either way, I think the content has to be well done in order to convert sales on a site like this. It’s just not there yet.
8 September 2009 at 12:04 pm #
Mmm… I never clicked any of those links; so missed it doing my review…
But yes, it could be that the Tony Joe White website still needs a few finishing touches… It looks great though! 
8 September 2009 at 3:17 pm #
The customizations of Tony Joe White are just awesome. But I voted for Palo. Palo Verde Lodge looks so cool, awesome play with colors. So eye-catching and interacting content.
Thumbs up Palo !
9 September 2009 at 10:32 am #
Palo Verde Lodge gets my vote.
10 September 2009 at 8:34 am #
I believe that “monkey(-thing) on the front page” is a sloth
10 September 2009 at 3:11 pm #
LOL… But I loved calling it “monkey(-thing)”…
10 September 2009 at 3:18 pm #
If you ever do get invited to that lodge, just make sure that “monkey(-thing)” doesn’t bite you for being referred to as a monkey-thing
That being said, Sloths are pretty slow, you should be OK.
10 September 2009 at 3:22 pm #
Have you seen me run? I’m definitely no Usain Bolt…
13 September 2009 at 6:35 pm #
I did not like typography It is not my taste
5 October 2009 at 1:53 am #
I had to go back and look one more time after I decided to vote for Tony Joe White and saw all of the comments praising the other one. Whew… I thought Palo Verde looked busy and kinda legolike while Tony’s site was clean, very artistic and eerie. I liked the transparent type and was surprised to realize that it was very readable. Oh well, just goes to show we have different taste…