Tales of a Designer

A Fresh Look

Update: I’ve added a main graphic on the homepage that comes courtesy of a an amazing photographer and fellow 9rules member, Azhar Chougle, who has a photoblog named the Daily Sunrise. If you like photography, go check it out!

For the past few days I have been slaving over getting this design done. You can even say that i’ve been obsessive. Normally I start designs in photoshop and that process can drag on for quite sometime, however, the minute I touch code to implement the design, it’s extremely hard to stop.

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

So here we are at my lastest design for the site, and the goal for this version was pretty simple, literally. I wanted to just simplify things. With my last design there was too much going on within the [unnecessary] 3-column layout. As I mentioned before, I got rid of items in the sidebar and changed the position of the nav to free up some room in the right column, and air things out. These changes also allow the site to be pretty flexible down the road.

I also decided to get rid of my portfolio for the time being because 1.) it looked awful and hadn’t been touched up in awhile, and 2.) I no longer do solo work anymore since starting a company. So there is no need to have my work on here because I am not trying to market myself anymore. Maybe down the road when I have more free time I will put something together on Carbonmade to ease the workload.

The comments have been revamped a bit too, which I like, because they don’t all run together like they did before.

Since it’s always good to try new techniques when redesigning, I decided to give sIFR a test drive because I wasn’t happy with the standard typefaces. My typeface of choice was Trade Gothic, which is also used in the masthead. I think it adds a great touch to the site and most certainly helps pull everything together. Of course with trying something new, you run into growing pains, so I am still trying to work out the kinks.

The site functions pretty well across browsers, though I do have some IE6 issues with a PNG that I am using, so I am still working on fixing that. Of course, if there are any other bugs, don’t hesitate to let me know. Again, you might see weird stuff happening with the headers, so I’m working on it.

I would also like to add in a search at some point to make finding old posts a little easier, but there will be things I work on as time progresses. I just wanted to have this done before heading off to SXSW, in which I will be blogging from as well, so stay tuned for that.

So that’s is about it. Just wanted to keep it clean and simple, just how I like it!

Feedback is always welcome.