Life As It Comes
Forrrrty Niiiine4 Comments
I give you: the wikipedia article for the original Burger King.
It was right across the street from my church during my high school days.
Weblog Design Stagnation3 Comments
For months now I’ve been trying to come up with a new design for this site - one that I plan to write myself. It’s been a while since I wrote my own template/design for this blog (since my MovableType days actually), and I’m eager to design something fresh, pleasing, and interesting.
The problem is, all the “layouts” I come up with are stale. Trite. I’m having trouble thinking outside of the designs I’ve already done, the designs everyone has already done.
Did you ever play an instrument? Remember any nontrivial audition piece? They were all “theme and variation” pieces. Take the Second Movement of Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in Eb, you start with something basic and then as you turn the pages of the score it becomes more and more technically advanced as the variations are presented and the piece continues.
The trouble is, I’ve tried all the themes and become bored with the variations. Take the following three examples. They all have well-known sites which implement them, whose authors make them look great:
the multi-column layout with fancy header:
mezzoblue
stopdesign
the variable-width header and footer with a sidebar:
simplebits
designbyfire
the floating content:
lifeasitcomes (using simpla from ifelse)
treba from ifelse
Are these the only layouts that work well for a blog? Am I over-generalizing?
Look at all the designs from wpdesigner’s self-challenge. Only a few escape that vague “this looks familiar” feeling.
Maybe it’s not the layout, but it’s what you do with it. The design community agrees that the new simplebits is beautiful and well-done.
Even so, I’m bored. I need a new idea. Got any?
Hooray for Missa!2 Comments
She designed and wrote the new website for the Indiana Inspector General’s Office.