Todays site histories is a very special one. Because it goes back a few years and yet doesn’t involve a hundred designs. Yes this Site History update is about the most resent layouts. Which means something very special to viewers out there, you get to see were the most resent layout came from.
Only within the hour did I finish the final update to the 2012 Trinest.com design, you see I started updating it at the beginning of the month. I cleaned up the blog posts by removing their titles and making the blog post image the key identifier of the posts. I also moved the post information such as when it was posted and the category as well as comments to the bottom of the post to tidy it up a little more.
I was in a web design mood tonight and it shows. So many changes from the 2011 design to the 2012 design which clean the overall look up, as well as making it more user friendly. Which has been the primary goal of the previous layouts to make Trinest.com more simple in design, as well as user friendly and keeping that trademark green you know me for in all my designs.
While the underlying code is much more messy, the overall site is much more cleaner. For example with the header, it probably wasn’t the most efficient way to make it so each element had a different colour- however it works, and that is the primary thing right now.
The footer is also a lot more green. However that is a different story, but still the same goal and outcome as the rest of the design. It has let itself go in a way, however at the same time the layout has lost a few pounds.
Moving back to the primary layout of 2011, you can tell there is an evolutionary path starting. You can notice for one the footer is more consecrated to the one area. In fact the whole layout is more consecrated. The major change in the 2012 layout was that the navigation and footer both have a fluid background behind them which makes the overall section of those two elements much bigger and bolder in the layout. The general blog post sections are overall the same style (however they have a title and all the information is at the top of the posts not the bottom). The content section does have an extra frame around it with styling. As well as the navigation having a similar style to previous layouts in this “series”, it also uses 1px borders instead of 5px.
I’m a little bit tried, so what I want to dig up as well as talk about is limited. However the next design is well known as the layout which I’ve used for quite some time, in fact it was still up this morning. What I’m talking about of course is the layout on old.trinest, the layout which was used before I decided to clean up the articles the site has and remove ones which are just not up to scratch or which were just quite embarrassing to have up full stop.
You can tell the layout was the influence for the 2011 design as well as this new 2012 design, and quite possibly designs to come. It’s overall structure is quite similar to the 2011 design. You can tell it uses the same green as what both layouts which came after it use. However its problem is with the grays, it uses the grays from the “Summer” Beta layout, which I’ve previously talked about. For those who don’t know the Summer Beta Layout wasn’t made in summer, it was made in June/July/August or what ever. Essentially Summer if you live up north, however down in the southern island it just isn’t like that here. However that does mean I’ve further made a connection to this series to a previous series of layouts, which means that the layouts which has been around in the past few years have strick ties to each other and forever grow as the years go on.
Back to the 2010 layout, its major problem was like I said the gray. Which is quite dark, you will notice that in the 2011 and 2012 layouts, this problem has slowly disappeared as the grays have been tinkered with to make the design much nicer on the eyes.
It’s footer and content sections are also quite different. The footer is once again from a previous layout, with the content sections been a brand new feature (curved edges I didn’t use much back then etc.) which did look nice, but as a full green section it doesn’t really feel nice.
The 2010 layout was a complete recode from the previous layouts, and the 2011 was also a complete recode from the 2010 layout. However the 2012 layout uses the base layout of the 2011 design with just added code and functions for what was changed in the design.
Who knows what the next years will bring on Trinest.com when it comes to design. Right now it seems there are no longer periods of a new layout each week, the designs while they have always been unique and nice, are becoming useable and magnificent.
2010 Design |
2011 Design |
2012 Design |
The designs which I’m going to talk about today are from Trinest.com, however are varied in what they represent and the years they were used. Today I’m going to talk about seven designs from the period of 2009 to 2010, and a little treat that some of them include development versions so you can see where they came from and where they lead to.
The first design is called in its archived form “April_Social_Article_TriProng” and it is from 2009. From the name it is given in the design archives I have you can tell that this little gem is from April 2009, however like all my designs could possibly be earlier.
So what does TriProng offer the average user? I was going to say nothing, but then I clicked on the archive and remembered that design TriProng is. I’m quite proud of TriProng, it is based around three colours Red, Blue and you guessed it- Green. So what does this RBG style design offer the average user? Well it is a quite well designed layout which features a right navigation. The main navigation is designed using a font I made using a free font maker as well as having little pictures above the text to give the user a simple idea of what the sections are about. One of my most proudest features in this design is the header. I’ve used this style in a few other designs around the time and what it is, is a picture I took with a camera with no Photoshop or any other artificial modification the header is drawn on a piece of paper with some textual differentiation to make it stand out. Such as a pen cap thrown across the top of the logo, or another main feature in this header a prominent shot of my hand.
Scrolling down the bottom to the footer I show off Facebook, Orkurt and WordPress links. The rest of the design isn’t as eye catching as the header or the side colour sections but still engolths the user quite well compared to other designs I had made from that era.
Moving on the next design is from some time in 2009 which devotes itself to 6 years of Trinest based websites. Well it says 7- but that is a lie because I can’t count. The design is quite green, and the pallet is a forest green instead of lime. The key feature for the design would be the navigation which is quite stylish in its own right. The design also features an array of sprites I have made over the years which represent “trinest”.
I’m going to move on once more to another design which is from early 2009 as well. However this design is quite disgusting in colour and appearance. It does however feature sprites and a nice header which is ruined by Photoshop effects.
The key design in this next section of layouts is from 2010, moving away from the previous year and grasping at straws to keep viewers to the site. The new layout has punk and dims the lime to an interesting shade of green. I like this early 2010 layout for a few reasons, but most of all because it is simple without been complicated. The key layout also ended up changing a few times as well, with the May revision showing an updated footer, and the “df” version showing a more development version of the layout with various things such as news sections been tested.
I would talk more about that design, but I won’t- layouts which I have done well seem to have that effect as there isn’t much to talk about how they went wrong like the next layout. This layout is from a series of layouts which slowly morphed into this layout. Also if you think this layout is bad, then the original design for this is much worse. I think the only good thing about this layout is the background as well as the elements which have been used from other designs, outside of that it has issues such as consistency in colours and general overall feel. Also a main problem is the overuse of shadows on the text and the general darkness of the header which clashes with the light overall appearance of the design.
Once again from early 2010 is another series of layouts which also use bases of the previous layout discussed (or lead to that layout using things from this layout, it is quite confusing to figure out where half these designs were made during the year). If you look that this layout the middle bit is quite nice, it dims the background and overall is quite easy to read and look at. However the header is a bit ugly and the footer also isn’t a site to behold. So in the “Remake” version of the design you will notice it goes from ugly to lovely with a header and footer with a similar style which is transparent to the background. The navigation also has more class and looks smooth alongside the main content area.
Moving on once more to the final design series for today, a design which rolled out around July and August and lead to the slow evolution and devolution as well as the eventual revolution which became the 2011 designs. It is quite stylish and the only fault I could find is maybe the grey colours could be a little lighter or differenciant differently. The only difference between the original and final version is a slight upgrade in various HTML calls the design supports as well as a modification of the “header” image. It would have to be one of my favourite designs I have made, outside of TriProng and well of course the current 2011 theme.
While there are many more designs I have made for Trinest.com, as well as other sites we are slowly reaching the brim of interesting designs which I want to talk about. As well as the fact it’s quite annoying to dig up archives to make these articles. This might be the last Site Histories on Trinest.com for some time. Until I move on to discuss the evolution from late 2010 to the current design.
TriProng |
Trinest.com 6 Years of 7 |
“Newsletter Trinest.com” Unknown |
Unknown Name Series [O] |
Unknown Name Series [DF] |
Unknown Name Series [MAY] |
Early Project Site |
Return to Blog Site [O] |
Return to Blog Site [R] |
“Summer” Beta [O] |
“Summer” Beta [R] |
“Summer” Beta [PAGE] |
So lets go back to the stone age for a bit, today we are looking at Trinest.com designs and while they are only from 2010 in the history of Trinest.com these designs where used a long time ago. My love for making a new design almost every minute has stagnated since then, however back in July there was a new flavour of Trinest.com which was taking a few pages out of the bit generation era with a series I like to call “Retro Summer”.
I don’t know the exact date for these designs, but they are listed as been created in July 2010. However the index pages seem to have an archived date from late May to mid June. So in fact not July at all it seems. However I do believe the designs were used for a period of time in July if that counts.
Before I go crazy trying to decipher when I made these designs, the big event has to occur. The big event were I talk about the designs as if I learned much more since making them.
I think the first design we look at should be the design dubbed “beta idea”. No doubt this was probably the original idea and were the direction for the resulting designs came from. Compared to the other two designs I will talk about (which one is a revision of the other), this design is quite dark in pallet. There is left navigation which uses a sort of simple style which I think is the key winner for the design. However before I get too attached to that navigation I have to say the header is the real winner, it uses Survival Kids sprites to give clear definition between the two sections as well as the social navigation and title sections using a transparent background. Other than that its footer is a pretty generic footer style which I have used in many of the designs since then and before.
I think from a design point of view this layout could have worked quite well, I don’t believe I kept this design up on my site for long, if at all. However I do see key elements which do not work, such as the footer. In my mind the layout is quite simple and cantered mainly around the black and white pallet outside of the header. I believe the bold footer colour which appears to have been picked out from the colour of the trees in the header is too bold in that location so it throws off the whole design.
Moving on to the other two layouts which are basically one in the same bar a few slight changes. I based the layout around Daniel Primeds layout and gave it my own twist. The previous header was made using Survival Kids sprites returns only in spirit alone as I’ve made my own sprites for this header which capture the simular essence which the other layouts header had. Other than that it has some quite descriptive colourful language for my testing which I’ve had to dumb down this time around for this newly published version here because I think you are more drawn to those words rather than the design.
If you look at the two designs they are basically the same, go ahead open them both in two different tabs then click on them. All you will see different in the two designs are the newer one has a background and a bolder border as well as some patchy dotted lines on the titles.
If I remember right I did use these designs for quite some time, well in terms of how many layouts which I had made during that period I believe that these had some use out of them. Maybe something along one or two weeks instead of only a few days. Don’t go digging through web archives to find out, because I’m just shooting in the dark here.
Design wise, I think these worked. Yeah there not the best in the world, but the layouts show consistency in colour pallet as well as been one of the testing grounds for many techniques which ended up been used on other designs.
Retro Beta Idea |
Retro Summer in July First |
Retro Summer in July Revision |
The Chip Behind the Idea is an idea for a website, a feeling an emotion a desire. Okay I’m going to stop trying to sell the idea, as it would be quite obvious by now if it was a success or failure. However this one has a story, and some interesting designs. So tonight I will bring you the second Site Histories Editorial of the day.
The site was from 2010, late in the year approaching the end of the year. You know that usual November or December or even October style time frame which seems to be the period all my sites start up in. However to be honest if memory serves right many of the sites final designs and days where only this year in the heart of January and if you want to know what happened next, first you must know what the site was, or least what it was going to be.
I don’t remember a day when the site was public, okay maybe it was, you know it was, however I think it was that usual week before I got bored style thing. But that is okay it was failed at the start. You see the concept was simple, make a brand new never before scene websites, take one average gamer who likes the whole idea of the behind the scenes stuff and then- you still playing attention? Then you put them together with email and skype based interviews posted each week. Okay that was the original concept, see how horrible cringe worthy it is. I know I do.
So what happened next? Well the site became something different, something existing, through the development process I decided that what I just outlined to you was never going to happen. So I decided to make more editorial based content around various observations with Video Games and then when the site is accuarly up try for those big gun interviews with developers about games.
So the idea obviously didn’t take off like that either. However the site was home to a few articles which if you go back a few pages on this site, no doubt you will find them.
So why are these articles on Trinest.com now? Well obviously I didn’t want to make them go to waste. However there is more to the story then that, to find out we have to look at what was happening at Trinest.com at that time. In the final months of 2010 the site had design quite similar to what is on here now, but it was a bit messy, the colours were not right (if your lucky the old.trinest.com archives are still up and that should be the design I’m talking about). So I kicked the site down to a project page for a bit around the time I was working on The Chip Behind the Idea. I felt that the content which was originally on Trinest.com was written pretty horribly, while I might be going back to that, the problem was also the articles which were written didn’t really have any substance. So no one was going to read a shoddy article if it is about well, nothing.
So with the dawn of The Chip Behind The Idea obviously not going as well as I want, it was time to relaunch Trinest.com I made the current layout and uploaded the editorials from The Chip Behind The Idea to the site. I also dug through the old archives to find articles worthy of been put back up on the site again. After that I tried to continue the similar style update schedules which I proposed for The Chip Behind The Idea.
However moving on to The Chip Behind The Ideas designs, they are quite unique. They resemble the transition of styles which Trinest.com had experienced over 2010 as well as reflecting some other styles I had for other sites at the time. More importantly you will notice that one of the designs I talked about only in the last article. It is the red theme from Another Code Labs. However this theme is also used for The Chip Behind The Idea, as a base for the website before I started anything in it.
I then decided to make something unique for the layout, which this next layout became the layout through the sites “beta” phase. While I havn’t talked about the 2010 era of Trinest.com yet, it does contain many elements from various designs during that time. The article section for example was from one of the designs previously made for Trinest.com. All that was done to it was some slight colour changes. This is also true for the “final” layout of The Chip Behind The Idea which used the article sections from another Trinest.com theme from 2010.
Other then that the designs are very basic and contain ideas and elements from the eras mentioned previously.
ACL Converted for TCBTI |
“Beta” Design |
Final Design |
You know it has been more than a year, maybe a year and a half since CiNG went into bankruptcy? What is CiNG you ask? Well CiNG was the developer of the Another Code Series. The video game which Another Code Labs was no doubt based around. So I felt today might be a good time for another look into layouts of old, layouts from a time gone past. Like CiNG itself, forgotten in time, and with many of the layouts gone for good. However there are some which still exist showing off what Another Code Labs was once when it was in its prime, as well as what it became, when it turned into a disgusting mini site and a shadow of what it once was.
Up on the discussion block today are four layouts. Two of which are from the old era, which I want to talk about first- for the simple fact they show both what the site was when it was in its prime, and where I was design wise and knowledge wise when it came to making websites.
These original layouts are also quite old, from the period of 2005 to 2006. Their exact dates are unknown, but they are from an era which I used a content management system called iGaming CMS. Back in those days I knew little about making a website and when it came to the designs on my sites, they where either free layouts or ones which where made by others. In this case however these two designs where designed by me, and the layout was then coded by someone else.
Dubbed “ACL 9” and “ACL 10”, while they probably were not to far off the exact layout version are completely different to the ones before and after it. I think the best way to look at it, is to first look at “ACL 9” and see what it represents.
“ACL 9” is green, and you will be surprised to know that around that time many of my layouts where not green. While green has become the stigma which is attached to Trinest.com, my previous sites such as Another Code Labs and either older sites like Aussie DS where known for their blues. Another Code Labs also featured sites with pallets such as brown sand greys. So while this is one of the first green sites I’ve made, what else did it put on the table? Well it was also around the time other games got introduced to the Another Code Labs website. Such as Konami’s Lost in Blue (Survival Kids) series and when this layout was introduced coverage of Animal Crossing (by Nintendo of course). Other games also followed while using this design such as Darwinia. However those extra games where dropped soon after. (The site went back to just CiNG titles and Lost in Blue games). So other then that design wise, the site used a combination of various sprites and artworks in the headers.
Moving on to “ACL 10”, it is a drastic change and quite a different colour scheme. While unable to be seen by looking at the design, this is the time where the other games where dropped. It also continues use various sprites from Konamis’ Survival Kids GBC title. Once again it has been coded by “Careykid” (obviously an internet alias) who reminds me in this raw design that I’m going to get my ass handed to me in Mario Kart. Well it’s on CK, if your reading this- the challenge is still available. Joking aside, with this drastic colour scheme which seems to work so well you might be wondering how I came up with such a colour scheme at that time. Well inspiration and the general colour pallet was drawn on from the default theme of a Forum Software called NextBBS.
Moving on to the Mini Site design which I’m some what disappointed in. There is a story behind it, at the time I had decided to stop doing the whole Another Code Labs thing. Which lead to a serious of events which my backup of all the awesome content I had disappearing. Which when I decided I wanted to do the site again, and I randomly looked for the information and found nothing- so I stitched together a Mini Site. Since that time Another Code Labs had never been the same.
Following the Mini Site blunder was a time when I decided I wasn’t going to do it again once more, which then resulted in, you guess it a return to wanting to do it. So that is where the final design today comes in. I did however make a serious attempt to try and get the site back to its former glory this time around. However it ended up resulting it the site been ramped with FAQs from around the internet instead of original content. The design was also used once again, but red when I tried to do the whole CiNG website again. This time around I dropped the Another Code Labs name, and tried for something like “Cingida” which was something like “Cing Information Database” Wiki? I’m not to sure. But if you guessed that project went to nothing as well, then you would be right.
ACL 9 |
ACL 10 |
Another Code Mini Site |
Rebirth |
Another Site Histories article, which means more designs to pluck and pick at. Today we are looking at the archives at a design which was called “Global Theme”. To be honest it wasn’t that global, it just at the time if I decided I was going to make something else, just featured a version of that theme. It also was used on various network.trinest.com or other hub like locations I had at the time, so there’s that too! Oh and I think there might have been some kind of punbb forum attached to this style too at one time.
For the most part this global theme has only been on the trinest.com site. In fact any other project which it was going to attach itself to never really used it. I place the use of this theme simular to the basic simple style I had some time after, as well as Project Soil and I’m probably forgetting another layout too, but the point is, it was a design which it was just easier to port stuff to, rather than making a new design.
The exact era of this design is unknown, but what I do remember is that it was used quite early in 2008, and later again that year and possibly again sometime in 2009.
The most simple of these designs was the blue one, which was going to be used for a fansite of some sort, or something else. All I know is it obviously came after the green one (for the simple fact I wub lime green). I think it is a boring design to talk about, so let’s just talk about the descent into madness this design held, as it went from normal looking to lime. With the lime version with a suitable name called “lime rape”.
Colour direction aside, if we look back at this theme, it probably is one of my favourites I’ve created. For the most part I feel as if the original is pure perfection. With the colours chosen possibly a bit to obscure for some monitors and the coding probably not the best in the world, it does come short to what I could do today, for example the design you are viewing this page in.
However the colour direction cannot be pushed aside, the original while great ended up getting a little bit darker green while the banner tried to become the opposite. With lime becoming more and more common in the design. The end result of course is “Lime Rape”, which the whole theme is pretty much lime of some sort.
The banner while crazy and confusing, as well as possibly acceptable just draws blood from your eyes. Which is one of the reasons the blue theme also ended up been created with the site also flipping back to using the original.
I think I’ve also used this design temporary in recent years. Which shows how dynamic it really is.
Global Theme – Original |
Global Theme – Banner/Image changes |
Global Theme – “Lime Rape” |
Global Theme – Blue |
It was a few weeks ago, when my friend Kieren who I had previously made a design for his Non-Stop-Tech site rambled to me drunk on Messenger about some kind of Celica website. After I finally got the gist of the idea, that he had become some kind of walking billboard for a Celica car club he had joined and wanted to make a website, I decided “of course I’ll be in this as well”.
I instantly had an idea in my head, as it was a website for a car club which often engages in road trips, I wanted to identify a map on the main page. Also at the time I had just finished looking through various older designs I had made, and was inspired by one to make it similar in design to it.
I didn’t have to design any graphics as my friend took charge in making the logo. I just had to code the main design. As well as coding anything which was required to set up the forums or other things.
I never talked to the guy who accuracy wanted the site done, however through my friend I was encouraged to have the design colours red and black. I was also told through various stages if it was going good or something like that.
However through the design process a few suggestions and ideas from the person who wanted the site did flow down to me which was then implemented. Somewhere put in, but then removed as it just didn’t look right, or we ended up doing something a little bit different.
The majority of the content for the site was also created by my friend, who mixed and matched various stuff he had lying around from the Admin of the club. Also a few design changes where implemented due to the content. (For example I added in backquote css and other css calling tags for various functions).
A few problems occurred when trying to figure out forum software for the site. Mainly due to the requirement to have the wordpress and forum login information merged. Many of the plugins tried no longer worked with the current versions of the software, or where just plan hard to use.
Overall the feedback from both helping my friend construct the site from what he imputed as well as from the Admin of the group was reality good.
The site is up on my friends website at http://celica.non-stop-tech.com/ check it out there. (or you can view the site, always on trinest.com by clicking here, note: this version is a development version and may contain elements which have not been used in the final design.)
I love 5xxt.com, not because it was a huge failure of a website, but because it is one of the only sites I can open up my design archives folder and look at a wide range of layouts which had been designed for the website. I wouldn’t say they are bad designs either, while the site retains looks and skills which I had in 2009, the designs created for the site each tell a story, and today we will go through that story to experience one of the biggest project failures I’ve ever done (let’s face it none of my sites can really be success stories right?).
First a little back story, 5xxt was created in 2009 and ended well as soon as the domain expired in 2010. The first problem the site had was the original idea and the resulting ideas after it was created. The idea originally was to create a sort of “short url” site, but for private use or something, at least that is how the idea of buying the domain was sold from me to my friend. With me not having any control of my sites domains and web hosting back then. The resulting idea once the domain was got became “what can we do with this domain”, instead of “this is what we are going to do”. Which means it evolved from something which could have been somewhat useful into something which just screams- well why?
If we look back at the 8 or so designs created for the site, there is one final direction which the site went into, and that was both hosting any forum which I had at the time and a sort of “ideas” site. Even which at one point, a site designed to tell big companies what to do (I still retain my emailing to Ubisoft about “you should make a Rabbid Doll like the Cheat Doll” was the driving force behind this). Which was as short lived as any other idea on the domain.
Looking at my design history, I can tell that the site was first created in April. At the time there was no real direction, so a simple black and white “domain under construction” style site was put onto the domain. The layout embodies a feel of a simple website, with navigation if it ever needed it.
This idea of a hub page but an under construction page splashed the site into a simple design in May which could possibly power the rest of the site if need be, it really started to show the sites direction of been a site for “ideas”, rather than a site for any particular reason.
Also digging from the May archives is a retro styled unfinished design which was going to be the key design to a retro spirited comic. While the layout never got used for anything (much like this site- har har har) it did lead the way for the creation of one of our free layouts (Black and White), which can be found in our Downloads Tab.
Stepping back into April, and another design which ended up becoming a free layout (known as Splash Page in our downloads section) was what I mentioned a few paragraphs up about a project site designed to give the big corporations some ideas, cause quite frankly they have none. What was made design wise for this stage, wasn’t at all horrible but rather something special, it was a one page site which had things like “mission statements” and other awesome stuff.
Another design which was also originally from 5xxt was “Project Soil” the blue themed simplistic layout. Which once again is available in the download section.
If we discount what was basically just more unfinished hub pages, we have essentially reached the end of the designs used on 5xxt, but while I’d love to talk about the one which was all about frogs- I want to talk about one which was also used on trinest.com. This design was one which had a hub style design to it, but was also quite function. However the bit I was most proud with this design was green wise, it was just a simple stroke in the footer and a few splashes for headings. As well as the big bad header I did for the design, you see it wasn’t a graphical header in the tradition sense, it wasn’t created in Photoshop or anything fancy, it was accuracy a photo I took of a piece of paper which I drew some pictures on and splashed some various other objects around. I made it grey scale and called it a day, it looked really nice.
“Aether” Splash |
Fresh Ideas |
Hub |
Retro Comic |
Frogs and Project Site |
Content Splash |
Project Soil |
Starting Hub |
If you read various whispers around the internet in the past week it might have come to your attention that I was been a good samaritan and helped out a friend with their website. In the end it became a simplistic website with the goal of been easy for the viewers to navigate, as well as for my friend to further edit and modify. Today I’m going to go over the process I took to develop the latest design for his website.
We had been talking for a while that I just plan did not like the layout which he had been using for quite some time now. The layout was a paid layout he acquired back when he first started his website only late last year. I felt as if the layout was a bit too bulky and confusing for many of his viewers, especially when he targeted people who wanted simple tech support options as well as gamers who want to play on the Minecraft Server.
Well after talking about it for quite some time I had decided some action should be taken, it was around the time he was also thinking of enhancing the Minecraft Server options by getting a dedicated VPN server for it. So I decided “look I’ll make you a website for the launch of the server to the public”. So with that decided I wanted to know the basic things about his website, I made a list of what his site does at the end of the day (like the core elements of content) as well as gaging a target audience from his flip flop from Minecraft Gamers to Tech Support Clients. I came up with a direction at first which would be acceptable for both those things, using a range of colours and other elements he had already picked out and was decided on.
The website wasn’t built within a day, I spaced out my work on it through various crazy “road trips” my local friends wanted to embark on. So by the time the week was nearly out (the original deadline) it hadn’t really taken shape as much as I wanted.
The websites content area was still a frame (originally was planned to also house a sidebar within it), however I decided the original plans for that section didn’t quite work out as well as planned and cleaned up the frame to make an elegant content area. The footer was always quite simple, and the direction was never going to change there- I hate looking at websites, especially modern technology websites who have footers which have so much white space, or even worse so much content there.
The major obstacle I guess would have been the banner. I had an original plan that the CSS navigation would just be images from within the banner. Like I was going to develop a full based Photoshop sort of navigation and banner. Which ended up coming a little short of my plans, (after I realised my Photoshop skills had drastically gone to the gutter) so I curved it into a simple plan banner with a style which can be easily modified by the client.
At the end of the day however, it looked good- everyone was happy and while only a few things have been changed since I “finalized them”, many have been things I had over looked, or things which I had forgotten to implement.
You can always view a sample of this layout online here at Trinest.com by clicking here.
Looking at my sites, both past and present- there is a horrible underlying issue which says “yuck”, it is a principle which has extended and stuck to the site and become a bad stigma. That is- does this site design wise function.
The site has seen many designs in the past few years. When I say many, I mean at one stage- a new one each week. This became a problem, and if you have been a regular visitor the past year you would notice it has been less and less. New designs have been more on the back burner of problems which the site faces, mainly now more content wise, then design wise.
But that does not mean the design should be forgotten. With the design in 2011, the site developed an interesting design language. One which functions how the blog posts are written, and how the site looks to the over all user.
For years I’ve developed for my own use, more simple and arguably elegant designs which embody the site. Especially in the the early years these changes had been more helpful and useful not for the visitor, but for me. Something people would notice is that most of the designs in the rush which featured many each month is that the designs each featured something unique. Different techniques on how the overall site is presented to the user, and while slight changes, they helped grow the knowledge of how to develop the site further.
With the back story done its time to move on almost. This design has been around for good while. It needs to evolve as they say. Slight changes which eventually over the years it becomes a new design. A style which has been more recently the way new designs have been performed so the user can get to know the changes before they happen. However any changes I feel like doing in that regard later will be purely navigational for now.
The site embodies a simple layout. But is it really that simple?
Each article has a banner. With the banner representative of the color theme. With each image in the banner blurred in various ways. However some are different, some break this rule and are mainly ones which I show images to the article, you see the images in article idea is something the site avoids, however sometimes the articles need an image in the article, and there has never been an efficient way coded in this particular design. So there is one strike against this design already.
Secondly is the navigation. It has been a style which has been in previous designs used on the site and features less intrusive style then before. It is a simple list which has the categories on the site, and then a more tab. It works. It’s not a strike its a plus for this design. It’s the only thing which centres itself as a prominent delicate hold to the site which shakes the rest like a wet towel if it has anything else wrong with it. This navigation controls the style the rest of the site has to put up with.
The footer is also plain, and the pages within the site which are not posts are not really straddled to any design either.
So ask me again, does this design work? My answer will be yes and no. It works for the fact it is an obvious evolution to what has always been pushed for this site. As a personal blog, it has always been a design style which is simple and not very graphical orientated. However on the flip side it has issues which where clearly related to it been a rushed design.