~Lyrical Designs
2004-02-15 - 11:37 a.m.

I like this design. I also like the design on my blog. The last designs I had on each of them were good, but not quite right. The Lana Turner one on my blog was both unimpressive enough (I wanted it to be really streamlined and all "oooh" from people, giving the impression that I'm a righteous queen of HTML and CSS) and not really me. I always find that a picture of one person/group I admire seems to give and impression of only a very small side of my personality. The green and pink blossomy one that I had on this diary I liked better. I always like designs that I've made totally from scratch (and these days actually make less of them - at least, less that involve any images other than background and text) and the blossoms were very pretty. But the colour scheme wasn't quite me and I wasn't content with the lack of definition. When I first started designing my own graphics it was acceptable to have images and text plonked, neatly plonked, but still plonked wherever. Now they have to look more impressive and professional than that or I'm not content. Laura's designs, for instance, are almost always very sleek looking. It doesn't mean that her designs would suit me, but I want that style with my own look.

The design for my blog is one I'm particularly proud of. I made a design for Sarah (the mangofarmer on my blog's buddy list, go lookee at the design!) and then a little while later found a colour scheme and font I liked even better. So I used exactly the same layout, one I'm very proud of, but changed the background and colours and font. But she liked the first one I made, so it kept hanging around unused. Finally, this week I was browsing through unfinished designs looking for one to finish and finally use and I saw that one, only I'd changed the font and the text at the side to suit me. So I uploaded it, re-coded it for my blog and voila! I'm finally using one of my all-time favourite designs!

This design I made on a day when I started about five different designs. I often get ideas for designs but can't always pull them off. Sometimes the actual image making doesn't go well and sometimes the images look fine but setting them out on a page is awkward. I recently got a new Corrs live album which has the song Summer Wine with Bono and I really like its slightly mysterious sounds and the blend of voices so it's been in my head a lot. So I up and made a design for it. I used the heading "Summer Wine" and it had a nifty effect. When I came back and found it yesterday, I didn't want that header, so I chose the opening text and made a smaller header, but I really struggled with getting the same colour effect. It's ended up different, but I still like it. Then I made the wine-pouring thing, which looks homemade but still not half as tacky as I'd thought, and rather effective. Then I rearranged the text and it's position on the page about ten times until I was content. Coming back to it today, I just want to keep looking at it in satisfaction, so yay! Although Summer's over in about two weeks...It's a strange combination of colours. I'm not sure how I stumbled across them, but they work very well, it's a very interesting look for a simple layout.

P.S. Wouldn't the title of this entry be a great name for a design site??