Rearranging the Furniture
07.28.09
Like many software companies, I’m updating my product so minimally that you may not even notice. Nevertheless, the update had to be done. No you won’t be agreeing to any terms and conditions or EULAs here, but you’ll observe a totally redesigned blog page and type changes across the site.
960.gs Homepage
I decided to finally put a grid system to use. I was hesitant because I didn’t really feel that it would make much of a difference. I couldn’t have been more wrong. After going back through some of last years 24 Ways articles, one posted by Tim Van Damme / Max Voltar got me to give it a try. It’s ridiculously easy to put in place and easy to hit the ground running. If you’re at all inspired by popular print work or more of a graphic designer type, grid systems are your new best friend. I thought I would need to add a lot of additional code to my stylesheet — wrong again. I simply needed to add a few class elements to my markup and I had a totally redesigned blog page. Checkout 960.gs to get on-board.
I really like the post headers of the old blog page and the integration into the sidebar was fun to build, but the sidebar just isn’t necessary at this point. I’m not a “blogger” so I opted for form over function. There’s a super simple blog nav at the bottom of the new page that will get the job done for now and look much cleaner in the process. Also, you’ll find links to common places I get inspired, have a laugh or kill time.
The home page didn’t get much attention. The devil’s in the details and little changes can go a long way in my book. I’m a becoming more and more of a Type nerd, and large type was calling my name — I had to answer. Even though the only change was the placement and typography of one really small paragraph, I feel like it changes the look of the entire page for the better. But I could just be glad to see something new after staring at that page for far too long.
For those of you living under a rock and those indifferent folks out there still rocking IE 6 or 7, the Mozilla team realeased it’s latest iteration of their wonderful FireFox browser that is all over CSS3 like like a wet jacket. There are a good number of free typefaces out there that you can begin to use right now. The League of Moveable Type is a good place to start. I had a good time playing around with it but ultimately decided to just add some text-shadowing to my headers and call it a day.
If you made it this far into the post, you’re a swell person. Since you care so much about my little portfolio site, you should say hello.