Splinter Youth Incorporated is a small company that has a huge heart for the underground skateboard culture and the kids that are in it. They have a family of websites that offer everything from skate decks to full on pre-fabricated Skate Parks. The main objectives for this website were to provide a portal to the other sites that Splinter has, offer a link to their Pay-Pal information as well as provide a way for people gain access to the Skate Park Ministry Manual that was developed by Splinter’s founder Mark Janetta.

The scope for the site was very simple so I was wanting to keep the design of the site simplistic as well. There were only going to be three unique pages and a few outbound links so I felt I had a bit more room to play with the negative space throughout the layout and use some nice shadows to give the site a very clean feel. Continuing in the brand that Splinter had been trying to establish the site primary color was based off the Splinter blue used within their logo.

I built this site in early 2008 and it was one of the first sites that I used a completely pure CSS horizontal menu. Also, one of my favorite elements of the site is the Splinter Logo water mark set into the background image of the site. This was a technique I first noticed (and fell in love with) on Barack Obama’s website and have been trying to use on most design’s ever since.