I was bored during the week, so I hacked up a new blog design based on a mockup I made in Inkscape a while ago. I’m pretty impressed with the result, so I would appreciate it if you would check it out if you’re reading this post via a planet or feed reader.
One of my major goals for the redesign was to return to a neutral greyish design much like a design I wrote over a year ago. Also, my hackergotchi is now displayed in the blog heading, which should make my blog twig in peoples’ memories a bit more (“Hey — I remember this blog — the one with the kooky dog picture in the corner and the drab grey sidebars”).
I like the fact that the Blog tab is connected to the sidebar, emphasising the fact that the sidebar contains useful navigation items relating to the blog. This breaks down, however, when you’re on a different page, like the home page. On the home page, it doesn’t make sense to join the “G’day” tab to the sidebar visually, as the sidebar isn’t within the context of that page.
Any constructive thoughts about the design are welcome. In the meantime, /me awaits another “minimalism” delicious tag from swallick.
Consider doing a version of the theme with the sidebar on the right hand side?
People will naturally look to the left for content, and you may not want their first impression to be the navigational/meta guff.
Otherwise, I like it a lot!
Thanks for the compliments.
When you say “sidebar on the right hand side”, do you mean just .sidebar, or the #header and #nav as well?