Welcome

Yep, finally got my new design online and the comments are functional! I still have one or two links to add on the homepage, but it is 99.9999% complete.

The overall design is far from my my comfort zone. Usually I go for pixel perfect, very clean web design. Although I have experimented with grungy designs before this is the only time I was really happy with the result.

Words cannot describe how much Dribbble has influenced me in creating this. Having a constant stream of tremendously talented designers displaying what they are working on at the moment really got me thinking of the subtle details I could add to make this site look more presentable. On the flip side, I have edited some things over 50 times just to get things right.

Bold statements

What I’ve done on the homepage even surprised myself. I have abandoned the portfolio images altogether, and I’ve kept writing to a minimum. This is all new to me, and I dont know if it will work well , but I may as well try it before I scrap it.

League Gothic

Yes, this font is used in abundance throughout this theme. Its probably one of my favorite free fonts to use in my projects and I’m using font-face to embed it on my site. I could have used a javascript method like Cufón or Typekit, but I’ve found that  fonts behave better when being used normally. Oh and the added bonus of this being free was nice too.

Portfolio

My portfolio page has gotten a drastic overhaul with larger images. This has been missing from my designs for much too long, so I’m pleased with the outcome. I have quite a few projects still to add to that section so thats not quite there either.

Articles

Starting this project, I had considered going entirely sidebar-less in order to get the user to focus on the content in the articles directly. But then realising that the rate of which I post is about once a month, I thought that the content of this “blog” wasn’t all that important.

Overall I’m happy with this new layout. And although I’m bound to have the exactly opposite opinion in a few months, I thinks its a fairly accurate representation of where I’m at as a web designer.