Only one day in and I could not help tweaking my new theme. I’m not sure if you can call it an improvement, but at least it’s different. I started playing around with the idea of a gradient background image. I decided to add one to the top of the site to add some pop and increase the contrast between the color scheme and the background. I found a number of articles on-line for doing this, but the one that I liked the best is here. I actually installed Gimp specifically to edit images for the new theme and I have to say it’s working out really well. If you have a strong opinion one way or another about the new background post a comment below and let me know.
After putting off a re-design for nearly a year I’ve finally opted to update the look of this site in honor of my 100th post (well 102, but who’s counting). What you are seeing now is the first cut of the new design. I consider it an evolution rather than a revolution. The design is based on top of my Welcome theme which was itself built completely from scratch. Taking this approach allowed me to reduce the design time from approximately a month for Welcome to less than a week for the new Bogus theme. There are some parts that remain largely unchanged while other parts have had a big over haul. I plan to continue tweaking fonts, colors and images over the coming months to try and improve the look incrementally. If you have any interest I’m happy to give you a brief tour under the hood.
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I worry about color schemes. I know it’s nuts for a web developer, but I’m constantly reminded of the impact a good color scheme can have on the presentation quality of a web site. It’s horrible to put in a bunch of time and energy into the technology of your solution only to discover that your color scheme is driving your users away. Gasp! In my latest (desperate?) search on the web I found a post titled “Choosing Web Design Colors” by Donald Peterson. It’s typical of the types of articles I usually find, but I though the writing was direct, the style was comfortable and the site had a nice clean layout which told me Donald takes his color schemes and design work very seriously. If you are need of inspiration then give it a read.
I recently read an article on contrast in web site design that caught my attention. The author contends that designers must focus on contrast as much as color to accommodate people with various forms of color blindness. She suggests several tools on the web that can be used to view your web site in gray scale or rate your success in delivering effective contrast. The article can be found here. If you are interested in comprehensive web design then it is a quick and useful read. As for your humble authors blog, I thought it looked reasonable in gray scale (GrayBit), but CheckMyColours was as the article’s author predicted less than kind. My long postponed redesign may be getting closer.
Smashing Magazine recently published several articles on Color Theory for Designers. I thought they were pretty easy reads with an interesting perspective so I decided to link them here.
