Paul Johns

Well kids, it looks like I finally got done with redesigning the site.  I have to say I’m very satisfied with the results.  My wife and my brother-in-law told me that they liked the old design better, and I understand where they are coming from, but this design allows the content to breathe more.  It’s wider and just feels less cramped, and I hope it satisfies the visitor’s expectations of how a blog should look and feel.

The last blog had more of an artistic flair, with the swirly colors and the presence of more gradients and shadows, but I wasn’t satisfying to me.  I didn’t like the fact that it was too thin, and I gave so much room to accents like swirly color bands.  I thought that room could be better put to use by converting it to content space.  So the main issue was solved.  The site is now wider.  I also reused almost all of the colors from the last site and worked them into this one.  I liked the colors from the last site, so I saw no point in changing that.

Something else that bothered me was that the navigation was sloppy.  On single post pages, the navigation was an image based navigation bar on the top of the page, but on every other page, it was a text-based list on the sidebar.  Although I’m certain anyone could have figured it out, it just didn’t flow well.  I fixed that by having the navigation always on the top right of the header in a little text based inline list.  See it up there?

Since my blog doesn’t have a huge following (yet!) bandwidth has not become an issue, nor do I see it becoming one anytime soon.  Even so, I decided that this site was graphic-heavier than I wanted it to be.  I had spent more time focusing on design, and given almost no thought to the layout and user experience.  I remedied this situation by using much fewer graphics, and using more CSS for design elements, when possible and sensible.  For inspiration on how to pull this off well (which I think I did, for the most part) I drew inspiration from sites such as A List Apart (ALA), 5thirtyone, and Subtraction.  From ALA I got the idea to incorporate serif fonts into the mix, something I had never really done before, although it’s very common in blog designs nowadays.  5thirtyone and Subtraction inspired me as they have in times past with their deceptively simple use of borders, lines, and positioning.  By the time I was done, I really felt like my site was leaner and meaner.  Like I had trimmed the fat.

It's the new logo!

When I was trying to get inspired to make the header of this site, I came across an Illustrator tutorial on Veerle’s blog.  Illustrator isn’t my strong suit (that would be Photoshop, if anything) but I thought that maybe if I took the tutorial, I would be inspired by it, perhaps in some other way.  When I got a little over halfway done, something unexpected happened.  I realized that I was looking at the letter ‘P’.  I rotated it 45 degrees and voila!  I had designed a logo for myself that I actually liked!  I’ve tried to make myself a logo before, but as other people can tell you, it’s probably the hardest logo to design.  I’ve always liked simple logos, and it doesn’t get much simpler than mine.  Until I come up with something better, I am very happy with my new logo.  I changed all of my social network icons (except Facebook) and Gravatar to this logo.  Thanks Veerle, the check is in the mail! Okay, not really.

I will probably always be tweaking this design here and there, but mostly it’s just moving around information on certain pages, trying out new plugins, and checking various browser compatibility issues that may arise.  Most of my energy will now be focused on blogging, hopefully making interesting posts that people will read on occasion, and oh yeah, taking over the internets.

Well, I hope you enjoy the new design.  If not, I’m really sorry, but I got to do what I think is best for the site.  And I have to make myself happy, ultimately.  I mean it IS called Paul Johns dot com.  Give me a friggin’ break!  And thanks for reading.