I finished Liesl’s blog this morning. Now that it’s all done I can confess that this one gave me some nightmares along the way. It looks pretty simple, doesn’t it? But whoa, the composition of this one stretched me to the outer limits of my graphic design ability. Honestly, sometimes I feel like Donkey in the movie Shrek. You know: “Blue flower, red thorns, blue flower red thorns . . . this would be so much easier if I wasn’t colorblind!”
Problem: how to convey “chaos” and yet still make the design unified and cohesive; how to combine these different elements without just making them look randomly scattered. Or, more accurately, how to make them look randomly scattered but not have them actually be randomly scattered. Solution 1: make each element touch the one next to it, and put a different color up above, thus tying them together. Solution 2: make the dog dip down lower than the rest, with the sidebar also lower underneath it, thus tying the text to the header image (this will be more after her baby comes and the ticker factory goes away — you’ll see that the posts start higher up than the sidebar).
It wasn’t until I actually had it coded that I knew for sure it would be all right, but now that it’s done I’m absolutely crazy about it. If I do say so myself the blue gauze background and 3px black border on the sides were strokes of genius. ;)
7 Comments
As usual, nice job, Julie. Liesl is surrounded by chaos, that’s for sure.
Love it.
Thanks again, Julie! I’m so in love with the new design :)
Very cool! I love the way the fish is bestowing a kiss upon the little boy. It’s vibrant but not overwhelming.
Yeah, lovely skin. I had a bit of a browse there, but didn’t coment (apologies to Liesl. I particularly like the gauze look.
Looks great! I’m proud to be your firstborn!
fun to have seen your early stages and then this final version–the colors really make it work.