I know that I’ve had this design iter­a­tion of my blog up for quite some time, but I never really con­sid­ered it com­plete. In fact, I still don’t think it’s opti­mal, but it’s about time I post about it anyway.

Unlike the last design, the colour scheme here is dom­i­nantly white and cyan. This time around I really wanted to show that I wasn’t all dark and sui­ci­dal. That scares peo­ple away. What the lighter colours do here is invite peo­ple to come in and read (hence the dark text on white back­ground). If you’re com­plain­ing that it makes your eyes bleed, then that’s your fault. Turn on some [more] lights and sit far­ther away from the mon­i­tor — you’re muti­lat­ing your eyes (glasses/contact user, here) by not doing so.

To expound a bit, this theme was derived, code-wise, from the stock Twen­tyTen Word­Press theme. It’s a great base to build upon, despite the some­what messy CSS. Regard­less, the code is sim­ple and it’s easy to imple­ment your own unique­ness. As far as design, I can say it was par­tially based on my pre­vi­ous Cloudy design. I ended up spend­ing a lot more time on this than I really thought I would.

In the end, the result is pass­able and I can be proud of it. Just recently I added the recent work slider and tweaked some incon­sis­ten­cies in the side­bar. I still have a long list of things to either add or change, and I look for­ward to check­ing off items as the year goes on (time permitting).

As a tra­di­tion, I like to share the song that was the dri­ving force of my inspi­ra­tion and moti­va­tion to work on this, because music really is pow­er­ful! This is a great track!

To close: I’d just like to point out that every time I re-design some­thing, it is a sign that my design or devel­op­ment skills and tastes are evolv­ing. By re-working some­thing, I am able to take what I had learned pre­vi­ously mak­ing the theme and apply it along­side my new found skills and tastes.

“Prairie Sky” by Jesse Ther­rien (source)