New Logo - Third Time's a Charm?

I would make a terrible interior designer - first painting the walls white, then dark gray, then bright yellow. But it's so much fun changing the colors of my website!

I have experimented with different looks and color combinations, but I know this one is going to be it for a while. I love yellow and I love warm colors; they make me happy, happy, happy.

I'm in the process of completely redesigning the website. It will not be an all-Flash site. I have grumbled before about my ambivalence towards Flash sites. They are beautiful with everything glowing and blinking and sliding around, but I find them difficult to navigate. You can't use your back or forward buttons, you can't bookmark anything, and sometimes they're agonizingly slow.

I will still have Flash slideshows, but they will be embedded in an HTML site. And this site is going to be simple, which I think better suits my aesthetic. Look for the new site later this month.

New Blog Look!

So dreary. So gray. Maybe I saw The Dark Knight too many times. And I'm still thinking of catching it on IMAX.

In any case, here is the new look!

New Site Colors and Logo

I played around with the colors on my photography site and created a new logo. And no, my blog doesn't match my website yet. One day I will take the plunge and get WordPress up and running, but I haven't quite wrapped my head around it.

I am still working on redesigning my website so that I can ditch my template by the beginning of 2009. I'm a big fan of sites such as this one for Peter Yang. I like that you can view all the gallery images on one page, unlike many Flash websites.

I don't find Flash to be very user friendly. Flash can definitely create some beautiful sites, but often they're slow to load, can be difficult to navigate, and don't allow any bookmarking of specific images.

But Flash is definitely the flavor of the day when it comes to photographer websites. I might not ditch it completely, but I will definitely not have an all-Flash site.

Site Design

As I continue to plow through my Project Blended website, struggling with every little detail, I'm finally beginning to understand why people hire professionals to do this kind of thing.

I know - duh.

The main reasons I keep going are that I just want to prove to myself I can do it, and I want something that I can control. So if I need to add a new gallery, or change some text, I don't need to hound someone else to do it. I only need to hound myself - which is already hard enough.

The next hurdle is WordPress - I installed it and am somewhat hypnotized with all this PHP stuff. It's hard to believe that all those weird words and symbols actually mean something, and that there are people who understand it.

And here I am, still fumbling through CSS.

Clearly there are plenty of people who have figured out all this stuff, and I like to think that I'm reasonably intelligent. The goal is to get this thing up in July. And if I haven't hurled my computer out the window by then, I will move on to re-energizing my personal website, and finally - the Big Kahuna - redesigning my photography site.

The Murky World of Web Design

When I first came up with the idea of a mixed race portrait project, I had no idea that in a couple month's time I would be puzzling my way through CSS, XHTML, XML, and Flash. I thought that I would go around taking pictures, dump them on my current website, and maybe design a postcard using Illustrator or Photoshop.

But the idea of a website just for this project seems like such a good idea. I could have the portraits. Then I could add essays. A section of resources. A blog that deals exclusively with mixed-race issues.

And a movie section - which I admit seems kind of random. But the idea of writing critical essays about the ways in which mixed racialness is portrayed in cinema has been bouncing around my head since I was film school student at UCLA.

So I'll put up with the headaches in order to get the site just how I want it. And I'll pray that the Flash fairy visits me and helps me build a slideshow based on an XML file that allows for visitor interactivity so that they can click on a photo and be whisked away to the relevant photo gallery.

Ugh. I get sick just writing that.

CSS Zen Garden

CSS Zen Garden is a fun site. Different programmers/designers take the same website and give it their own design. The following images all contain the same text, but radically different designs.

You can browse through all the designs here. You can also look at designs that have been rejected. Both sections provide plenty of lessons in good and bad design.