Redesigning (again)
I’m working on a new design for this blog, of course, because that’s one of the only things I do with my free time. I had made some headway before I discovered BubblesSOC. I really admire this design and hope now to take a lot of things from it. I’m not really into the colors or the persistent “About Me” header or the illustration, but upon close inspection you have to concede that its layout is impeccable. It’s easy to navigate and is content-rich while still being minimal. None of the content is shoved in your face too much at any one time. What I also like is that it invites posting from the author; even though only the most recent post is excerpted on the front page, it doesn’t dominate the real estate of the site. Ordinarily I avoid Verdana, but here it works really well. It also possesses visual depth without relying on the traps that so many contemporary WordPress designs fall victim to, save for the “Tags” ‘tag,’ which aside from being cliché is also frankly kind of ugly here, especially with that ‘stitching’ on its border. And the whole thing validates XHTML–strict! I don’t think I’m even capable of coding an XHTML-strict site. Plus the one I’m working on in the meantime is arguably too bold for my taste. Granted I’ve only begun on single.php, so maybe my home.php can apply a lot of lessons from BubblesSOC.
Keep an eye out for an upcoming post on the five web design trends that need to die in 2009.

xhtml strict is so scary. :’(