I’ve been wanting to overhaul my weblog’s design for the longest time now. Aside from the earthy color scheme, the current design is not too far off from the default template that comes with Textpattern, which itself is not far removed from the First Textpattern Blog (aka Dean’s own Textism). It has served me well, but it’s time for a change.

So. I started with the following ideas in mind:

• Simple, clean and unobtrusive. Content of the weblog is what should be on center stage. This really shouldn’t have to be said.
• Titles and excerpts would be flush to the side of each post. This would make it feel like the layout of a nice coffee table book, except that it would be all over your screen.
• The first design should be low contrast, color neutral. Worry about increasing accessiblity later with an alternate high-contrast layout.

So, I tweaked and tweaked and finally got something that sort of works. The only downside is that it totally hoses up entries whose titles are allruntogetherfordramaticeffectcausingthetitletogetclipped. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen often enough to really worry too much about it. Even so, there is still much to do. But this is the basic idea.

Click here to view the test page.

Anyways, I really would like some comments. What do you like or dislike? Is this a good direction to be headed down, or should I just throw up my arms, admit defeat and acquire a design from the a real group of designers.

Be nice, be brutal… just be helpful.