Today’s post highlights the design of FarCoast.com. A full-size Flash-only site features a slick sequence of fades and transitions during the initial load and navigation between the different sections. Warm and inviting photos of coffee and tea cups on the background of coffee beans and tea leaves, intricate multi-layer background patterns and worn out vintage color palette of beige, light brick orange and desaturated light blue serve as a perfect backdrop to precise typography that combines simple serifs with retro handwritten fonts.

The absolute positioning of the graphic elements is the only glaring shortcoming of the design. On screens smaller than 20″ the visuals are cut off on all sides, with no option to scroll either vertically or horizontally. This becomes particularly painful on smaller netbooks in the “Blends” section. Another usability issue can be seen in trying to navigate between different sections as the current section is being loaded. The mouse clicks are ignored until the load is complete – which make time significant time on slower network. It is unfortunate that such a great design is hampered by these issues.