I recently re-designed my blogs. It follows some of the same principles that my main website has, which is simplicity, something I can be proud of, something cool. The whole theme framework is built to be responsive. It works well on modern browsers. I still need to clean up some of the code and I'm planning on progressively making updates to it.
This is what I've been working on for the past month or so...
It was a fun and arduous task to design and build something simple. Every time I redesign and rebuild my site, I always want to make something I can be proud of. I wanted to make something that said something about me and my views on design. I wanted a clean break; behind all this is wanting to start all over again, wanting something simpler than what I had before.
I stared with how I identify with my site, my “brand,” and thought about how it feels to be me and to do the many different things that I do. The site is divided into four parts: first the landing page, and three blogs (photo blog, projects blog, and personal blog). I designed for the two real aspects of the site.Trying my best to unify and simplify them.
When it comes to the brand identity, its not fully formed. I don't really have any idea where this kind of creativity would lead me, but its part of my job. Doing things like this, doing things for myself help me create better for the company I work for. I design user interfaces there that are unlike this. They tend to have more complexity, that I'm trying my best to simplify with great UI experiences.
With work like that, there's just... A lot. A lot of thinking, drawing, designing, rendering, and designing; measure once, research use, measure twice, research again, think think think, study, coffee, bathroom, and repeat.
When I come home, I'm constantly thinking of other things to work on, projects or things to make, portraits to draw, portraits to take, my website to design. This redesign is a product of that longing to create.
None of this would not be possible without Google. The landing page is built on the Google App Engine and the blogs are built on top of Blogger with a template built from scratch. The concept is about freedom. Google empowered me to create. So, thanks Google.
This is it for now. I'm thinking of releasing the framework for this blog theme as something that other people can use. That would be really cool. Right?
I feel like I've got a golden ticket, and somehow I'm magically transported into the wonderful world of Google. As I was leaving home for work, a delivery man comes up to my car window and startles me. He says, "I have a package for you." Which I realize is very similar to what the delivery man in Back to the Future, and I felt something like Marty. I didn't order anything online, nor did I order anything from Amazon... then I thought to myself, "could this be possible?" So I partially opened the box right there, lo and behold...
The Google CR-48, in my hands. I partially opened the box in the car I couldn't contain my excitement as I drove quickly to work to complete the unboxing.
So, I'll be in the pilot program for Google, I'll double check to find out about any NDA before I start posting about the netbook here.
Anyways, back to work at Liferay.