One of my favorite one-page sites that I came across while searching through onepagelove.com is called Portuguese Chimneys, found at http://www.chimneys.pedrogaspar.net/#1. The site is fairly minimalistic and is more of a display of the architectural designs of different chimneys found and recreated by Pedro Gaspar.
I was drawn to the site by its simplistic, yet powerful use of color. There is a heavy use of variations of blue for the background of each different section. As mentioned in the color chapter of The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, blue is strongly associated with the sky as well as water, so having it as the background of pictures of chimneys makes a lot of sense. The chapter also makes note of the calming feeling blue can exude, and scrolling through this site is admittedly fairly calming to me. Although each section has a different tone of blue, the fact that they are each still related by their color similarity makes the design even more cohesive. While most of the site is prominently blue, the chimneys themselves are mostly white with some other small portions of color to accent them. The whites and off-whites of the chimney illustrations make them look clean and are representative of actual chimneys from Portugal. The text on the site is also white which looks quite good on the blue background. The color chapter mentions using white in this way to shake things up, opposed to having colored or dark text on white backgrounds. The other colors used in the illustrations range from yellow to beige to brown to bright red. These add to the design by distinguishing the differences between each chimney even more than shape simply does.
As for texture, the design of this site is quite smooth in appearance. Everything is filled in solid colors that work, although it lacks a bit of depth. Depth is added with shadows on the chimneys, which does make up for it a bit. The texture chapter of The Principles of Beautiful Web Design does make a point by saying:
Now that I’ve spent the entire chapter explaining texture and convincing you to add it to your designs, I feel obligated to let you know that sometimes texture is just unnecessary. Just as you might eliminate color from a design to create a specific effect, discarding texture may just be the best way to establish your site’s personality and character. (texture, 111)
Adding texture to this design might take away from the illustrations if it is done too heavily, but adding a minimal amount to parts of the chimneys might make them look a little more real. The shapes used to create the chimneys are mostly geometric, but some of the details on them are more organic which gives them some character.
The navigation of this site is from top to bottom. I like the option of scrolling a bit to take you to each section or clicking on the circles on the right hand side to pick which section you want from anywhere. It was also a nice touch to have it automatically take you back to the first one if you scroll down while on the last section. It is very easy and simple to navigate through. Having it be so simple really compliments the design since it is also very simple. Though there is not much to read, the font choice is a clean one and it is very legible. The kerning could be altered a little to make it more visually pleasing. Overall I like the way this site was made and hope the designer updates it to add more of his unique illustrations.