Change of scenery

Gone but not forgotten
Gone but not forgotten

Where did the rusting, peeling paint go?

This won’t mean a thing to anyone reading this post via Facebook, LinkedIn, or a feed reader (which is most of you), but I’ve changed the design of my blog.

Instead of creating my own blog template, whipped up in the late hours of a weekend night or patchily repaired when I had a spare moment, I’ve opted for the clean, lean, and now nearly ubiquitous design of the Thesis theme.

What am I, a web designer, doing using a blog theme created by someone else?

I would like to focus more on the content of the site and less on the layout of that content. I would have used another theme before, in fact, if I had been able to find one that was configurable enough and well-made enough not to drive me crazy. Now that I’ve found Thesis, I can spend time on the important stuff: digging up more obscure cocktail recipes and strange videos for your entertainment.

Truth be told, we (my company, Big Big Design) are deploying Thesis on certain client blogs as well. It’s cost-effective for the clients, so there’s time and budget left in a project to help the client focus on their message, process, and strategy — areas where we offer greater value. Everybody wins.

The rusting and peeling paint may return soon though. There’s clean design, and then there’s *too* clean design. I like to see a bit of mess. Expect a few layout and design tweaks in the near future. And photos in the random photo area that are, you know, mine.

8 replies on “Change of scenery”

  1. Yay! I always somehow ended up having to read text over the rusty background photo—something to do with opening the comments in a new tab instead of in a popup—and came to [cough] hate it. Sorry.

    Which reminds me, I really need to finish making a new template for my own blog. I started the process of moving it to my own server months ago, but then I got stuck on the theme thing. You made the wiser choice, in just getting it done.

  2. I like it! The front page especially, with your older posts as little blurbs below the newer ones. Looking forward to seeing what you do to make it your own — then again, I already know that you do great design work.

  3. India: I’m so sorry to know you had to read over the background. I remember there was a problem, and I thought I’d fixed it. Again, it’s an example of my not putting the same time and attention into my own site as I would into a client’s. Anyway, I encourage you to check out Thesis. Use the time and energy you save to write terrific posts or make lovely drawings or just relax.

    Amy: I’m looking forward to the challenge of personalizing the theme. (Which flies directly in the face of my wanting to spend time on content instead of presentation….) Enough people are using this theme that it’s interesting to think of what would be unique — or just unique enough to amuse me.

  4. Oooh! Very clean and cool.

    I did love the rust, though.

    And on design and using someone else’s — Pretty much anything I wanted to knit, I could probably design. But I like the process of knitting, and there are great designs out there. So I let other people design, both to save time and cause their work is good. But sometimes I’M supposed to design, and then, well, there you are.

    And playing around with the theme — that would be very interesting. Working within the box, so to speak.

  5. I’ve had a similar internal debate when I finally moved out of Blogspot to WordPress for the personal blog. I’ve yet to change even the header, though I like the look of it as is. But where my career and project development has taken me, I’ve strayed away from keeping up with design and more on producing the content between everything.

    Content over style, as always…

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