My visual style

The brief states the website must be 'informative, visually exciting and engaging for the user through content and imaginative use of interactivity.' 

My design is going to try and focus answering this specific sentence.

My visual style I have had a good think about and I have decided i'm focusing on a theme of 'Natural' you could say my design is based on this keyword.

So to start with my boxes and the website itself; every edge is going to be ridged to give that scratchy look which I think goes well with earthquakes as they them self create that sort of ridged effect when they make impact to the earth.

For my background I have had a thought about using an image but I really don't think i will be using one. Im more dragged to the idea of sticking to textures/patterns as the background. I really like the faded light brown background the truetea website uses. I want something very similar to this.

But I also have other ideas for colours so i'm quite sure yet what the background of the actual website is going to be compared to the wrapper background. Im visualising in my head to have the background a pastel effect like black with the wrapper being a pastel faded brown like what is used in the website above. I would have the header a darker brown like the footer used in the website above using a brown very similar to the second to bottom brown. Have all text on the page black which I think will contrast well to the light faded brown.

I also want to use this brown shine effect on the brown background with a grain effect, I think it looks really nice and would suit my visual style. It will add a bit more excitement and dynamism to the look.

From that indie dude website, this use the effect which gave me inspiration to put it in mine, I think it just looks really nice, it goes well with my earthy/natural/grainy theme. I want to use this behind the title of 'Wonders of Nature - Earthquakes' Header then in the iBook have it coming from the bottom right hand corner on each background of every section.

For my navigation I drew up on sketches of what I want the roll over to look like. Here I have found inspiration for m choice of having a transparent box come behind the text when the mouse is hovered over it.

The background texture for this header is ironically very similar to what I'm having as well, this is the visual style im trying to replicate. I want to use the same idea of when your on a page the tab on the nav is highlighted to whatever page your on, with the box touching the bottom of the navigation just like here in this one.