With this new redesign this marks my seventh version of this website. Seven versions in 5 years isn't bad. But I must digress and say that versions 2 and version 6 didn't have very long shelf life. Version 2 lasted all of a couple of weeks before I completely hated it and redesigned it. Version 6 has been up for about a month. Technically it was version 6.5 since there were two versions of the same design. So what sparked the redesign again? Well read on and I'll go into some details about this new version.
First off, as much as I liked version 6 it was colorful and had some remnants of version 5 which I really loved for it's simplicity. Version six was born out of returning to the ExpressionEngine CMS, which I dropped for version 5. Six was big and loud and was a experiment with doing everything bigger. However I didn't feel the site was up to my level of satisfaction… and it just merely did it's job.
So insert version 7 of eddidit. This time I decided that I wasn't going to slack off with the design. I normally set up deadlines for my redesigns then due to life procrastination etc… I end up rushing the design in the end to make my own silly deadline. Well this time I threw the deadline out the window. I was going to take my time and finish the design and layout when it was finished. This helped me motivate myself to go over and beyond what I ever done in web work before.
First I started off with the wireframes. I don't always do wireframes for my site, the designs are usually trial and error until I'm happy (Oddly the versions I've created wireframes for have been the best received maybe I'm on to something). I went through two wireframe versions. Very identical except a few things changed in locations
It didn't take long after that before the design was fully fleshed out. One of the great things about this design is the little touches of detail. That may not mean much to you but I'm glad they are there. They add a little I don't know what. There are subtle graphic elements and hover states all throughout the site.
The gallery was rebuilt from scratch. I decided to drop the unnecessary jquery scripts that I used for that last version. This version however does make use of the Masonry Script which reorders the gallery vertically instead of horizontally. This gives it a much more appealing look and feel. Also new with the gallery is the color system. Each gallery item has a unique color code that was generated from the image.
Geeky Bits
- This site makes use of ExpressionEngine 2.1 CMS
- It was coded in XHTML and CSS3.0
- Utilizing Masonry, EasySlider, Cycle, and Colorbox Scripts
- It took about 100 hours to create this site.
- MacBook Pro 17inch
- Adobe Illustration CS3 and CS4
- Adobe Photoshop CS3 and CS4
- Adobe Dreamweaver CS4
- MacRabbit's Espresso and CSSEdit