Archive for the 'design' Category
04May06 | css, design, geek | 6 Comments »
I was pretty disappointed in my reboot performance, so I have decided to jettison that theme and start over. I tend to get caught up in the “hey that gradient is cool” or “look at all the pretty images” and try to incorporate that into my designs, but alas that is not me. I am not a graphic designer, I don’t play one on TV, and I didn’t stay at a holiday Inn express last night, so therefore I should stick with what I do best, and that is creating simple, clean designs. I really started evaluating my own past designs and found many things wrong with the way I was going about designing. (more…)
01May06 | css, design, geek | 2 Comments »
I am sure everyone and their brother will have an entry entitled “CSS Reboot” today but oh well, what else should I call it? Frankly I do not know why they call it a “reboot” in the first place, but that is just me. Today marks another CSS “Reboot” for the World Wide Web community. For the non web inclined, the CSS Reboot is an orchestrated “re-styling” of websites across the world. What you see before you is my half-assed attempt at a reboot. One of these days I will produce something I am happy with. I think I have what derek has; “Obsessive Compulsive [design] Disorder”. Anyways I have been checking out some of the “reboots” and they all look pretty good. I already have ideas for my next reboot (which for me will probably be in a couple weeks lol).
My next project though, will be finishing my photo gallery. With Ruby on Rails being “the next big thing” I am not sure if I should continue down the php path or start developing something in rails. Both of my hosting providers totalchoice and mediatemple support, or will soon support rails. There are Flickr API “kits” offered in both languages.
For my non “geek” readers I will now be going back to my regularly scheduled programming; ramblings of music and everyday life!
26Apr06 | css, design, geek | 5 Comments »
Here we go again! Early, early I know……….my last redesign was not my real reboot (haha I fooled ya)……here it is in all its unfinished glory; the real deal, the real reboot. Once again not everything works, but it will by May 1st I promise. I have added a photo link to my still under construction, non working photo gallery. Soon I hope to have everything in working order, and looking all pretty. Feel free to leave feedback, remove me from your feed readers, un-bookmark me, whatever, I can take it. I have put so much time and effort into this reboot, that I have a beard down to my belt and haven’t showered in 4 weeks! Ok not really but it feels like it. I have about 3 wordpress themes that I started in the process of this whole conundrum; so maybe, just maybe when I have time I will polish them up and offer them for download.
27Mar06 | css, design, geek, wordpress | 14 Comments »
Before you start commenting and saying nothing works, relax because I aready know! I figured the only way I would finish this, is if I started using it. So here it is, feel free to offer improvements cause lord knows it needs some. I took some elements from hemingway, and also some from k2, and kind of mixed them together. Creating a theme from scratch is much more difficult than I thought it would be. But I have made some headway. 3 columns using only css is a bitch, but I think for the most part it is working (atleasts in IE, and firefox). I still need to implement a site search form (not sure where to put it). Thanks to Kristin for showing me how to do Chris’s comments, and where to find them.
To do:
Finish css layout Thanks derek!Create header image (ditch hemingway title thingy) good enough for nowsearch (no result page yet)fix archivesfix footerupdate pages Content is there, just need to pretty it up!fix my nowplaying plugin (not working right now)Gravatar support on comments pagefix category links- everything else I find that is wrong in the process lol
03Mar06 | design, geek | 2 Comments »
As I sit here, and try to dream up pretty K2 styles that will set me apart from everyone else, I also find myself wondering why I even care? There are plenty of blogs out there that look like shit, but have great content, and there are those that look like shit and have shitty content. The ones that look the best usually have great content, and the reason they have great content is because the author has taken the time to produce this content as well as make the overall package visually appealing. I don’t posses the skills to produce something like this Veerle’s blog (which is a great blog by the way filled with many great tutorials). But do I need something like that to get my point across? I’m not sure that I do. I was reading a recent post on Jason Santa Maria’s blog the other day about keeping a sketch pad around. I haven’t had one of these since I was a kid and instantly found myself wanting to go out and pick one up. I always used to draw things when I was younger, and now wonder why I ever stopped. He brings up an excellent point of spending the time to create a design you dreamed up in Photoshop just to realize that you don’t like it or it doesn’t work. I do that constantly, and have folders filled with half-finished projects.
A question for my readers that are either freelance designers or professional designers; how do you go about starting a personal design? Do you sketch it out? Do you create the whole site in Photoshop or a similar program then construct it on the web?
Also when I was thinking about this I thought of something else:
(more…)