Yes Virginia, things do look different around here
Reboot Mark II
If you are reading this and don't have a style set (the grey arrows in the upper-right let you switch between four different website styles, if you were unaware) then you've noticed that things look different here. I am still hammering out certain issues with this look, particularly regarding Firefox's lacklustre ("shitty") implementation of the @font-face CSS method and Internet Explorer's curious inability to deal with transparencies (and fonts. If you're using the latest versions of Opera, Safari or Chrome this page renders exactly as designed; otherwise, if you don't have Futura Standard Book and Akzidenz Grotesk installed you won't see the typefaces I am using).
Essentially every website I have ever built--literally going back to '98 or '99--has been the exact same: solid colours, left-oriented navigation bar (occasionally with some supernavigation links along the top), banner. HTML, broadly speaking, discourages being too "designy". Also, I have been telling myself that I don't really have a design aesthetic, and blah and blah.
We had a web designer in the office the other day, going through his work to demonstrate it for us. Then I realised several things: firstly, this webpage is really an outlet for my creative urges; secondly, I have been paid, in my life, both to do graphic design and web development, so I ought to know something about them (maybe); thirdly, I should start to put together a portfolio of my own.
So, this is a rough implementation of that. Because I don't really understand how colours work, my girlfriend helped me with this. The remainder of the page is, as before, CSS-formatted SQL-driven content. Now it has pictures. These are all pictures I have taken myself. Incidentally, if you are curious, they depict:
There is apparently some disagreement as to whether or not this is in accord with my established aesthetic. I can say quite emphatically: it is not. I dislike my aesthetic, which is flat and boring. I like this one. So. New aesthetic. I imagine it will not be universally popular (I am predicting the goat to say "What is this ;.; it looks like you pissed Easter onto some stained glass. It makes me want to cry"), so you can still switch back to the old style if you want. But. I am happy, it's my website, so :P to you.
Tomorrow I post about how much I want to give Firefox physical form so that I can stab it.
Also, District Nine was pretty cool.
/a
Essentially every website I have ever built--literally going back to '98 or '99--has been the exact same: solid colours, left-oriented navigation bar (occasionally with some supernavigation links along the top), banner. HTML, broadly speaking, discourages being too "designy". Also, I have been telling myself that I don't really have a design aesthetic, and blah and blah.
We had a web designer in the office the other day, going through his work to demonstrate it for us. Then I realised several things: firstly, this webpage is really an outlet for my creative urges; secondly, I have been paid, in my life, both to do graphic design and web development, so I ought to know something about them (maybe); thirdly, I should start to put together a portfolio of my own.
So, this is a rough implementation of that. Because I don't really understand how colours work, my girlfriend helped me with this. The remainder of the page is, as before, CSS-formatted SQL-driven content. Now it has pictures. These are all pictures I have taken myself. Incidentally, if you are curious, they depict:
•
The Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, CA;
•
Grains of sand, White Sands, NM;
•
A yellow rose, Portland, OR;
•
Ona Beach, north of Waldport, OR;
•
Sunset on the Pacific, Yaquina Head, OR;
There is apparently some disagreement as to whether or not this is in accord with my established aesthetic. I can say quite emphatically: it is not. I dislike my aesthetic, which is flat and boring. I like this one. So. New aesthetic. I imagine it will not be universally popular (I am predicting the goat to say "What is this ;.; it looks like you pissed Easter onto some stained glass. It makes me want to cry"), so you can still switch back to the old style if you want. But. I am happy, it's my website, so :P to you.
Tomorrow I post about how much I want to give Firefox physical form so that I can stab it.
Also, District Nine was pretty cool.
/a
| La Chevre! 18.09.2009 - 7h42 |
District 9 was horribly-written swill. I could have written a far more intelligent, insightful and entertaining film, and you know all too well how well I write. Also, when did you get a girlfriend? (And you predicted my reaction to the site design more or less correctly. I tried it for a couple of minutes then switched back to the red and... beige? Plus I use Firefox.) |
| Comrade Alex 18.09.2009 - 8h16 |
You really don't go middle-of-the-road on anything, do you man? Haha. I thought District 9 was fun to watch. It wasn't as heavy-handed as I thought, which is fortunate, because the apartheid metaphor fell terribly, terribly flat. +ca |
| La Chevre! 18.09.2009 - 7h27 |
Hey, I hold lots of moderated positions. Sure, sometimes I might exaggerate a bit when I feel like my opinion rubs up against the general view (how in the name of Pete did District 9 attain an 81 on Metacritic?), but I can waffle and kvetch with the best because I'm so in-between. I was actually going in expecting something good too, which may have colored my perceptions. But I simply could not get over how poorly the characters were developed and how unrealistically the whole situation played out once the aliens made their way to Earth. I was also shocked by the heavy-handedness, especially in light of the fact that, as you said, there was no message behind the metaphor. But Klis, you never answered my question. |
| La Chevre! 18.09.2009 - 7h29 |
P.S. It would seem that your timestamps on these posts might need to have an AM or PM appended, or, preferably, be set to the military time standard. |