The new design: a briefing on progress
Feb 17, 08:07
The site’s new design, while still a work in progress, is available for public consumption. I can hear the roaring applause as I debate whether it was a good idea to upload the files before testing them in as many browsers as I usually do. But I’d honestly rather have this layout posted with a few bugs to iron out then the old one. It was very cool, but also very square, very old, and very blue.
Too blue, in fact, which introduces one of the primary motivations behind this design upheaval: my pervasive use of various blues in the last design left it a little hard to read on my Mac. It was a problem even before viewing on Windows and its glorious gamma-imbalance. End result: just enough contrast to be annoying.
I couldn’t lose the blue completely (religion) but I replaced the old grumpy man color with his hipper great-step-nephew-in-law, and also pushed the base text color to pure black. I think it’s easier to read, and hopefully I’m not alone.
Everything type-related is new. (Thank god. I know.) I have to admit to being inspired by a great article by Dave Shea and Typography: Macro- and Microaesthetics by Willi Kunz. Generally, we’re going run with this serif idea, regardless of those rumors about it being harder to read.
There are even changes to the main site navigation. Introducing the home button. Also: The portfolio is gone, as it is rendered obsolete by the coming-soon-I-swear Exists Outside site. References will be explained in that section and in the future.
There are a few lingering issues (some spacing issues with IE6) but most things are working most of the time. My overall goal for the future is to post more often, and also continue to introduce buzzword-features to enhance the overall browsing experience. Which means: user comments, RSS feeds, etc. Stay tuned.