Playing around with designs

I haven't really been checking into this blog as often as i should. It's the same with my other blog though... so it's not intentional neglect! I promise... though it might be a bit. If i'm honest i have a slight love for wordpress and still can't fathom why i went with blogger.

Anyway! Over a month ago now i completed a online channel for a collaborative project. Here's a screenshot of the home page for it:

The design for the Fortunes Fall site was much darker than the one i implemented to Cloud Canvas, which moved me out of my comfort zone of bright colours, and allowed me to be more creative. All in all i think the end product was pretty awesome! The different aspects i threw into the design on that site got me thinking about progression of my own portfolio website... something i'd neglected a fair bit lately.

The way the main content was framed by the links bar and, the footer bar gave a nice feel to the content and placed it well. I think this places it much better than the boxes i used on Cloud Canvas, so have been playing around with a new design that does not require boxes. I came up with this:

As you can see the fan gradient does not continue throughout the page and cuts out as soon as it hits the links bar, which acts as a frame / separator for the page. This combined with the footer below which uses the same notepad overlay gives a better feel. It also allows for more freedom in what i put in between, and for page heights as i'm not restricted to the white boxes i currently have on my portfolio page. This will allow the use of Java sliders like on the Fortunes Turn page, and less squashed looks to the pages. In my mind this is good progression.. hopefully i can continue it!

I'll try and keep this blog up to date with changes as i make them!