Last updated Thursday, May 3, 2007

Redesign just about done

Apart from a huge amount of client work I've been working on a redesign of shapeshed.com. With a few things to clean up it goes into the wild today.

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Focussing on typography

For too long now I’ve ignored typographic presentation on the web. This version of the site doesn’t completely absolve my inadequacies, but it has given me a more thorough education in the possibilities of type on the web. With so much of the web still being words I feel this is an area that is sorely overlooked. Some of the new fonts available in Vista are used for those that have them. They are great typefaces and I’m looking forward to seeing these appear on the web. Cutting down on graphics also has the advantage of making the page weight lighter.

Changing with the seasons

As an individual I am affected quite strongly by the seasons. I wanted to allow the site to change with the seasons. I’m already looking forward to the summer when I can change the colour scheme, a few icons and the wallpaper.

Stronger emphasis on articles

I’ve been surprised at how much traffic I get for the articles I’ve written. So I’ve improved the layout of the journal page and also the comments. Sharing what I learn is very important to me as I have learned many of my skills from others on the web.

Still a few headaches

As much I would like to put this to bed there are still a few areas I’m not happy with. The archive page seems unwieldy and I’d like to add in some unobtrusive javascript and AJAX here and there. Time is a constraint though so these will have to wait.

The typography also needs a good going over, to make sure all the sums are right and everything is sitting how it should.

Still learning

More than anything this exercise has shown me that I still have a huge amount to learn. I suppose that’s why I like this profession so much.

Have an update or suggestion for this article? You can edit it here and send me a pull request.