15Oct08 Stuck

This week I’ve been working on a redesign for this site. My color palette comes from this photo. I was a little wary of using the colors I did because they’re not what I would normally use. It’s turned out much better than I had thought. So far I’ve got most of the content arranged to my liking. I say most because I got stuck on another part of the design before fleshing the content structure out: the header.

Since I’ve “come back” to the blogosph— wait, I haven’t mentioned how much I hate the word ‘blogosphere.’ Overall it sounds extremely pretentious. What’s wrong with calling it ‘the blogging community’ or even ‘the blogging world’? I want to choke someone every time I see it. I digress. (I’m tempted to give my blog the tag line ‘easily distracted’ because I keep going off topic. Then again it seems a little negative.)

Let’s try that again. Since I’ve “come back” to the blogging community I’ve noticed people calling the top portion of their site a masthead. I was wondering what that meant but two seconds with Webster told me that a masthead is

1: the top of a mast
2 a: the printed matter in a newspaper or periodical that gives the title and details of ownership, advertising rates, and subscription rates
b: the name of a publication (as a newspaper) displayed on the top of the first page

I suppose people use it for the same reason they use colophon for the ‘about the author’ section. I am resistant to change so I will continue to call it a header.

I spent quite a bit of time yesterday visiting a variety of sites in an attempt to gather ideas for my header. From this and previous observations I’ve noticed several trends. Trend might be too strong of a word for some of them as they’re pretty basic. However, things I’ve noticed:

• Scalloped borders. I think it’s safe to call this one a trend. A fad, even. Sure it’s more interesting than just a straight edge border but I’ve been seeing it all over.
• Name tags. These are usually found in designs that try to capture the scrapbook look.
• Site name only (sometimes followed by a ridiculous tag line). I suppose the creators would call this simplistic or minimalistic.
• Flickr streams. These usually consist of the site name with the person’s 5 latest flickr uploads beneath it.
• A single photo that has the same spacing around it as the content of the site. That’s not too specific but I find it rather boring.
• Illustrations. How could I have almost forgotten these? Illustrations seem to be a designing trend as a whole lately. I’m referring to the cutesy cute ones.
• Vertical lines. I know, how can that be a trend. However, it is something I’ve seen quite a bit. They’ll usually at the very top and bottom of the page in a tiny line.
• Large (and often loud) background images. This one really isn’t a header trend but I’ll put it here anyway. These are usually seen in designs that have a very simplistic header and seem to be compensating for it by having a very busy, colorful background image.

Despite my criticisms I’m really not taking a ‘holier-than-thou’ approach or condemning any site that implements one or more of the trends I’ve noted above. The truth is I’m being harsh on myself. I don’t want to make something that just looks like everything else. I’m aware that I could fall into that without realizing it so I’m making an effort to look around me and see what’s going on. There are reasons you see so many repeated themes in designing: most of them just work. They’re visually appealing and often easy to execute. It’s easy to think that being unique means you have to do something radically different which may or may not work so well..

Another part of the design I’m stuck on is a little area I’ve temporarily dubbed “Socialize.” That’s not really the word I want for it, though. One thing that bugs me about the current design is that I didn’t include a link to my RSS feed. Firefox shows me that a feed is available through the status bar but I’d like to make it a little more obvious mostly because I hate having to search for a feed link. I say that to say that I found a nice set of icons that include ones for RSS, Twitter, WordPress, and Flickr. I’d like group those together in a section but I haven’t found a name for it yet. Socialize isn’t working for me because only 2 of the 4 are really social sites.

Maybe I’ll just throw them together opposite my navigation that will be in a small bar that spans the top of the page. The navigation on hover will, of course, be surrounded by a rounded corner box in a contrasting color.