Yesterday finally inspiration hit me and in four hours I photoshopped and coded a new design for this website. I was messing already a month ago with a new design but I always want too much and to complicated. Then I thought keep graphics to a minimum, keep it simple.
So I did what usually delivers my best design, I started from a photo. I used the sky color for the background, and other hues of blue for the text. Then I tried a contrasting color, I wanted green first but wasn’t real happy with it and then I decided why not yellow. You don’t see a lot of yellow on websites.
For the bold text I went with Courier New, because it is the same font the text of my tattoo is in. And Helvetica for the smaller text. Because Helvetica is cool. And white was just the logical color to go with.
Considering I was keeping graphics at a minimum I still wanted some nice effects, enter CSS3. Here is where CSS3.info came in handy. I know IE7 and lesser don’t support it but I don’t even care for IE6 in connection with my personal website, I leave that headache for work. And people who have IE7 are way more likely to upgrade to IE8.
For the Twitter status and Flickr preview I’m using Garrett Murray’s js_twitter_flickr. He also uses some CSS3 selectors like text-overflow: ellipsis;
Hopefully now with IE8 being released the likes of Dan Cederholm, Andy Budd and Eric Meyer will release books fully dedicated to CSS3. That’s is if they haven’t already, I have to check Amazon for the latest. Meanwhile I’m anciously waiting for A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web to be delivered.
But summing up, after a year and 4 months I have a fresh new design, in my favorite color blue. The WordPress template is clean and validates. Which I couldn’t say of the previous template.
Last week I spend reading Don’t make me think by Steve Krug. It was for work that I decided to purchase the book and I’m glad I did. It isn’t often you get such good books in content and writing. Now that I read it I see websites from a whole different point of view.
I was always aware my own weblog isn’t the best usability wise, but then my weblog is not focused in making money or providing valuable information. It’s my personal playground and outlet on the internet. But now that I’m working to better my usability knowledge I’m thinking about a new design more user focused…it’s just I quite like my current design.
I recently also purchased Five Simple Steps by Mark Boulton.
A simple approach to applying graphic design to modern web design.
I read the first two chapters and it promises to be a good read. I’m not completly inept at designing but I’m more of a coder. So I hope this book will give me some new insight on how to aproach design. While I do like that I’m able to do both design(at certain level) and code(front and server side). Sometimes it would be great if I could be a guru on one of them. But I’m more a jack of all master of none. But I have nothing to complain considering it was in year 2000 that I learned what HTML is, seems like ages ago.
Reading these books also made me think, why there isn’t any book in those format available for SQL. What I have seen a few times in the field is that lots of people are real strong at PHP or ASP. But the the databases lacks a lot. If it wasn’t for college I wouldn’t be good at databases at all. But there we had written and practice exam on relational databases and SQL. It was a prety hard course which forced me to really delve into it.
So now out of habit I will spend a few hours mapping out a database, thinking of all possible relations and possible sitauations. This way I minimize the chance of having to rehaul the database if a script is adjusted dramatically in the future. But on SQL queries a book would be handy, with real life examples using apps like WordPress, or some other popular application.
I’ll be keeping an eye out for more useful books like these. Like “Don’t make me think” has been out for years already and just now came to my attention how such a good book it is. So sometimes the good ones slip under the radar. If you know any book I might like let me know.
