Outdated, fixed-width layouts from previous incarnations of the Inquisition

Essentially, a reader-centred flow has now been created. The page starts straight off with an article. All other page elements are subservient to the text content. The article has things and stuff to the right and bottom of it. You, dear reader, are here for the content, let’s not show off with distracting design finery which distracts you from your aims.

But Why No Header?

It is no longer necessary.

Responsive Design

The page you are reading now is created in such a way that it will resize to fit your window. Try it out, if you are bothered, by dragging it to a different width (if you are using an old version of Internet Explorer you can just weep about how out of date you are instead). You ought to see the page dynamically expanding and contracting, with sizes and proportions altering as you go. Originally all websites were meant to be like this, then design got in the way of content. Nowadays design should support content once again.

The great benefit to this responsive design is that the Inquisition can be sure that the right aligned logo is always visible on the page. Equally, the the content’s width is never excessively wide or narrow.

In much smaller dimensions and environments, such as those generally present on smartphones, the Inquisition’s logo has been thrown under the bus. Unfortunately, nobody comes here to marvel at this stunningly beautiful artwork, so at those sizes it has been shelved under the content. No matter, a smaller one will still appear as a cap to the page.

Entrance Sources

The logo, is also less necessary now from a conceptual point of view. While it does lend the site an important level of visual-trustworthiness, it is secondary in this regard. Consequently it is moved to a secondary position. This intangible and subjective trustworthiness is crucial for a site based on rambling non-fictions.

Users do not come to the Inquisition wondering where to go. Although the website is conceived as a magazine of sorts the truth, as revealed in Google’s analytics, is that the vast majority have already arrived at their aim. When these users root about through the Inquisition’s archives, the activity is secondary to their arrival here.

This follow-on reading material is a bonus to them. To this end is it now indicated with pagination links which sit across the entire screen at the base.

Semper Quarens - The Inquisition logo and motto

Font Technology

Part of the redesign process was extensive trials of web font technologies. The Inquisition tried, in particular, Typekit and Monotype Webfonts.

Typekit loaded slowly. Too slowly for effective use. The intial page view was rendered with blank areas waiting to be filled by Typekit. Added to this, Adobe’s purchase made the Inquisition nervous.

The Inquisition got on well with Monotype. The backend and setup of the service was smart and intuitive, if a little bit ugly. In the end there were two deal breakers – loading time, although marginally faster than Typekit, was unusable for lengthy body text. Monotype’s free account also inserted a badge which adversely affected the new full width pagination footer.

Eventually a solution was arrived at; Google fonts. This allowed for replacing body text with a more comfortably readable font, which is desirable for the lengthy and verbose tracts of pedantry the Inquisition delights in peddling. It also appears to be fast and effective. Lastly, its free. While that doesn’t say much for Google respect for type design, it’s still nice.

Designed by A Worthy Cause

The Inquisition’s redesign began with the fantastic Starkers framework by Elliott Jay Stocks. This was, in turn, based on the 1440px Grid by Andy Taylor.

The final design is by A Worthy Cause, freelance graphic and webdesign in Dublin. Truth be told, A Worthy Cause is the other hat worn by The Inquisition.

Like It?

Seriously, it has all been thought of from the point of view of you, the reader. Do you like it? Let The Inquisition know.

Original content created by: The Inquisition

One of the “Pioneers of the laundry business in Ireland” used a nazi symbol while his competition in the clothes-washing industry used slaves.

The Swastika Laundry building, as it stood in Ballsbridge

Where and When

Ballbridge is a leafy and well-appointed suburb in Dublin. It is the kind of place where you find businessmen who are followed by the waft of dubious dealings as they rub shoulders with doctors who specialise in dissections of a single part of human anatomy which are diseased from over indulgence, all of whom have foreign diplomatic missions as neighbours. Its the kind of place with no dog poo on the path. Its a very nice place.

It’s the last place you would expect to see a giant industrial chimney with a giant swastika enscription emblazoned on it, for all across the city to see. For one thing, Ballsbridge is home to the US embassy. For another, it is home to the Israeli embassy.

One of the Swastika Laundry's fleet of electric vans.

However, for most of the last century Ballbridge was also home to the Swastika Laundry, a large industrial-scale washing operation. The laundry was opened in 1912, the second venture in the world of garment cleansing by John W Brittain.

Here was a man who understood the concept of a unified, all-encompassing and global corporate branding programme. His vans used clean energy – little electric whirabouts that were emblazoned with the sanskrit svastika symbol of good fortune. His racehorse was called Swastika Rose. The clear little symbol was ubiquitous and unmistakable.

It was, of course, unfortunate that his company’s livery featured their black and white logo sitting on a red background. So unfortunate was it that during The Emergency they were forced to (ever so slightly) rename the company, The Swastika Laundry (1912). So bully to you, Mr Hitler, we were there first.

Spy Hangout

As pointed out in The Inquisition’s earlier piece on Hermann Goertz the laundry drew attention from patriotic nazis. Both Goertz and his fellow spy Unland, felt they had no option but to use the laundry. Quite why they risked giving themselves away by doing is anyone’s guess. Perhaps they felt it was a cover operation, which it was not.

Bought Out

The Swastika Laundry’s chimney is now a protected structure. It remained decorated with swastika livery even after the company was bought out by Spring Grove Laundry in the 1960s. In fact, it remained decorated until the 1980s.

The last remnant of the laundry, the chimney now stands in the middle of one of many generic and unnecessary office blocks that were thrown up in Ireland’s construction boom.

Incidentally

Adolf Hitler’s brother, Alois, and his wife Bridget Dowling met in Dublin. Their marriage was brief due his being, as it is said in Dublin, a right old bollix. Bridget dubiously claimed to have been the inspiration behind the moustache and to have introduced Hitler to astrology.

Finally

A disclaimer of sorts;
As this is the second piece on nazis in Ireland, The Inquisition must make one thing absolutely clear. The fascination with nazis is purely out of historical interest, not an ideological fascination. But it must be admitted at the same time, they did have great uniforms.

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Bibliography
Broadsheet.ie covers the story (in its own way…)
Everything has its own Wikipedia entry… Swastika Laundry on Wikipedia
Eyelight Films has great images of the laundry on Flickr
Rare old Dublin: heroes hawkers & hoors, Frank Hopkins, Mercier Press Ltd, 2002

Original content created by: The Inquisition