Split Personality
One of my goals for this year is to revamp the www.mateljan.com and www.webdjinn.com web sites. In particular, I am looking to make a better split between my professional blogging and industry contribution and my personal blogging and keeping friends and family up to date. So far I have mixed the two here simply in an effort to get into the habit of writing regularly. However, I think the audiences are, for the most part, unrelated. By targeting them individually I think I can serve each of them better, as well as present each in a more consistent matter. Plus it will be less confusing for me.
With that in mind, my personal web site design seems to be coming along faster than my professional one. Not that I am a designer - more a developer / programmer - so don’t expect too much. Below is my first attempt:
Personal web site design - attempt 1
The overall effect is supposed to represent me. If you know me personally, it should say to you “Yep, that’s Adrian”. As I am not a designer, I am cheating a little by using real life objects as design elements - I am just not going to be able to come up with something like this that Lou likes - certainly not with any form of consistency. The objects are supposed to be arranged in a desk top like arrangement. Lou thinks it looks too cluttered, unbalanced and hence a little unnatural. I tend to agree - at least on the cluttered point.
What I am realising is that I haven’t done enough preparation on the content side. While the main elements are covered (travel, Da Ork Angelz, entertainment, journal, latest post, recent posts, welcome and about, tag cloud, what I am reading, watching, playing etc) some of the minor elements have sort of been relegated to the pad at the bottom without much thought to the layout or presentation (latest comments, textual navigation, calendar, blog rolls etc). The inconsistent navigation may pose more frustration than discovery - and I haven’t planned out the sub pages or how they may fit in with any semblance of consistency.
Still, as I said, developer not designer - I’m used to taking over from here, not getting to here… Any thoughts or comments are most welcome. In the meantime, attempt two is going to include more white space and probably lose the desk top metaphor (and feature more objects side on than top down) That is, after I have revisited the content requirements…
July 13th, 2009 at 6:34 am
I think your first attempt is really good! Especially given I couldn’t have even done this …… I’m still having trouble just getting into sights on the new Mac!!!!! Sometimes I have to try 3 & 4 times to get something to open @@##%%***##!
July 27th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
It’s a good concept, I think the reason it’s looking a little odd is the objects look like they are floating over each other rather than actually laying on top of each other. The coin, controller and DVD cases/book are the ones that stand out the most. A larger shadow would fix the book/cases and moving the coin so it’s not overlapping any edges would improve things.
The photo of the controller isn’t a top down picture either, it’s taken from slightly off centre, so the perspective is wrong, especially when it’s rotated a little.
August 3rd, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Like any beginner I latched onto the first tool (I thought) I could master. In this case it was the drop shadow effect. I imagine this would explain the “floating”.
You’ve got a great eye regarding the controller - I almost forgot that I originally photographed it propped up on one of the DVD cases - hence the wrong perspective.
Back to the drawing board!