I had a lot of fun this week coming up with a combination of “curio” and interesting brush work. I looked to the more mystic side of the traveling circuses for my inspiration and I really like the direction this design is headed. Last week I thought I was taking on a look that was too girly, but now it feels more old fashioned, with a touch of celestial. This is still a work in progress, but it’s coming along nicely and starting to really take shape!
Doodle. It Does a Design Good.
I find that when I feel stuck, doodling, even if it’s just little loopy squiggles, gets my creativity going. I drew out some embellishments or details I might be able to use throughout the design, including ideas for borders and bullets. I really like this thick and thin style and I also worked out a title treatment that I’m very pleased with. Don’t ask what font it is… it doesn’t exist. I drew it myself (with a Wacom!). I made it a little bit bigger than I knew I wanted and then sized it down so that it would look smoother.
When I doodle and sketch out ideas, I find it also gets the less creative ideas out of my head. Maybe that’s another way of saying it brings out my more creative side. Anyway, try it some time if you’re stuck.
Compositing Adds Detail
I started off the background with a notebook I found while doing research on how other websites have implemented designs involving old parchments and paper. Design Meltdown had a great collection of this style and at the bottom, Patrick has scanned in some attractive old textures. I downloaded the green notebook and used it as my starting point. Click the image below to see a full scale version.
Then I took to the wonderful art of compositing and started gathering little bits and pieces to add to the background. I made a diamond checked pattern and roughed it up with a few filters and set the layer style to Soft Light so that there is some color variation dependent on the background. I painted many brush strokes with different watercolor brushes and set them to various layer modes (finding I like the Soft Light for most of them).
I’ve also started slowly replacing pieces of my wire frame as I find a suitable design for each section. You can see I haven’t completed everything in the sidebar yet and I haven’t even started to think about my footer! I bookmarked the wonderful post on Inspiration Bit where Vivien collected some great examples of creative footers. I’ll definitely be going back to that one when the time comes!
The navigation still needs some work. Do you have any ideas? I’m not sure if it should be in the same style as the other lettering or if it should be selectable text. Do you know what the benefits of selectable text are for navigation? Are there any?
Oh yeah!! And Creative Curio is officially six months old today! I started this blog way back on August 1, 2007. That’s ages ago in tech time!
The Creative Curio Redesign Process
- Ideas for My Blog Design
- Wire Frames and Experiments
- Researching Alternatives
- Doodles are the Key to Success (current post)
- A Return to the Redesign
- Details, Details, Details
So what do you think? What does this design say to you?
Did you like this peek into my creative process? Subscribe to Creative Curio so you don’t miss the next update on the redesign! And you can also subscribe via email if that is more your thing. Don’t forget to say hi in the comments!
I really like the design. Even though it has a rough look, you can tell that it’s planned out instead of all just thrown on. I like that.
As for the navigation, I’m not so sure about making it the same style as the other words. I tend to like the nav links that are just regular text if only so that I can tab through the site. Who knows though, it may look even better with the navigation written out! I always have to test these things out when I am split between different methods.
Oh, and congrats on six long months! Hope you’re here for at least six more!
I really like the background and the layout. Personally, I find the pink-tan band-aid color to be a little off-putting as the post background, but one person’s band-aid color is another person’s ambrosia.
Nice - the watercolor look is very pretty! I love the colors. You will probably want to go with text rather than images with the pretty font. What if someone has images turned off when they’re browsing? Also, using keyword text in navigation can be a big plus for SERP rankings, as well as it being consistently “crawlable” by the search engines.
I also like the background very much, and the font as well. Though I’m afraid you won’t be able to use it in the Search area like you have it now, if you’re planning on having a text field there for people to type keywords.
As for the main navigation, I think it’s best to leave a regular font for the menu items - the main advantage of it that it stays dynamic and you don’t need to design menu images for every page you decide to add to your blog. Also, I think it will make the menu to stand out from being part of the design.
Overall, I like the direction - really like the mystique blue colour you chose for the background.
Hey, and congrats with the six-months anniversary and crossing the 500 RSS milestone twice faster than I did ;-)
Hi Lauren,
It will be my 3 months soon on Feb 11th. I was on holidays for a month of those 3 holidays so I don’t know if that counts.
Coming along nicely I see… I really love the textured blue background, its great. I also love the hand drawn RSS and the headings, very nice
Overall, however, something is not just sitting quite right with me. I am trying to see what it is, maybe the fact everything is so square still?
Why does the search box all have straight plain rigid corners when everything else not that style? I didn’t like this bit.
Also the squiggle underneath the Post Title, if you have a long post won’t that Squiggle disrupt the reading of the title?
Have you tried putting some of those moon squiggles and stars and swirls in the background or around the boxes? That would look cool.
Congrats on the 6 months
I’m getting excited to see the new design.
I love it!
Its so much different from the mainstream, its like a little girls fairy tale and makes it look very casual
You really are on the right track, although I agree with Jacob on the Menu.
Jacob Carter,
I think you’re right; I’ll have to test out having the navigation in the same style. If nothing else, maybe I can end up using them for the headers of those specific pages!
Thanks!
Alec,
Ha, pink band-aid… you know on my monitor at home I couldn’t understand what you were talking about, but when I went to work, I totally saw it. I think I agree with you… yikes! Need to change it.
Randa,
I really like these colors, too! I’m very pleased with how they turned out and I loved experimenting with the watercolor style. Very good point about not using only images for navigation and that’s just the kind of input I was looking for. Thank you!
Vivien (ib),
I’ve seen several search bars that have a unique setup like I’m thinking of, though granted, I haven’t looked closely at the code to see how they did it (and of course I can’t find them now!). You don’t think I could just have it as a background image? Easily changeable top navigation is something I was thinking would be a down side for the image-based buttons. I really like how Georgia looks with this style so we’ll see; I want to try the images, but I’m probably going to go with text-based. And 500 readers! I know! It was sure fast!
Jacob Cass,
It’s great to have such positive feedback on the direction I’m going. I’m excited to see how it will turn out, too! Hmm… still so square. How do you think I could get around that? Any ideas or examples you think do a good job of breaking the box? I’d love to see them! I’m still working the details; the search box and the squiggle are not final design decisions yet. Moon squiggles in the background! I like it. I will try that! BTW, your Banned from Own Website post is still your main link in the comments… did you want to change that? I can change it for you if you’d like.
Esben,
Hehe, fairy tale! I didn’t think of that, but you’re right. I like that you get a casual feeling from this design; I hope it’s welcoming, too!
Thanks everyone for your feedback so far! I really appreciate it and love talking design ideas with you. Any more input, feel free to add it!!
Jacob,
Ah geez, not again! Hopefully your new host is better. I don’t mind that you had that other link, I just didn’t know if you realized it.
Lauren, I didn’t mean that you can’t have a background image for the search form, I was talking about the decorated “search” text itself - you placed it right in the text field, how would it look when people start typing the text there? See what I mean?
Btw, have you seen this site ? Under Commercial fonts it has a link: Great Circus, with 5 featured typefaces, one of them is also featured on iLT ;-)
Creative, personal, fun and original. I really like it.
Happy six month blog birthday, Lauren! You’re doing great. ;)
Vivien,
Do you think it would be too hard to create a search box that had the sunken box and the search text I created in the bg, but force the cursor to start x pixels in so that the user doesn’t type over the search text? I’m not sure if that’s possible. Do you know? Maybe I can end up placing it above and just have a tiny little bit hang down into the field (like the end of the h). Yes, I remember that site now that you show me! I think John featured the typeface called Mosh. The Great Circus face is nice! I good alternative to Rosewood or Algerian that I keep seeing everywhere.
David,
I’m so happy that this look is receiving such positive feedback and definitely pleased with the feeling you’re getting from it. Thanks for stopping by and letting me know you like it; it means a lot coming from such an accomplished designer! :D
You’re too kind, Lauren.
About the search box, I know why you want to blend it with your design - it’s a good idea - but if you can somehow do that with the free Google search engine, I’d highly recommend it over the standard WordPress search. I use it on both my blogs, and the results are so much more accurate.
David,
Hmm, Google search. Yes, the husband is a big fan of that search tool on his websites, too. Well, sacrifice a little bit of pretty for a lot of help to the users. I will have to see what it looks like! Thanks David :)
I know the images are concepts, but the background is so layered that it’s beginning to look a little dirty. I quite like the logo, though I think it would be more legible if you used actual type.
I must say, it is interesting to see a design in progress. I also think you’re very brave to show us these concepts and mock-ups; if you saw some of mine, you’d cry “yuck!”
Johno,
So layered… you think it could be simplified and still maintain the same feel? I’m not sure if it could. I don’t want to sacrifice the legibility, though. Do you think the title is too hard to read? Is it the background or the hand-drawn part? Or a bit of both? I do value your opinions, so please come back and respond!!
I think I would love to see some of your in-progress work! The difficult thing about sharing that, though, is many things (particularly sketches) only make sense to the person who has done them and often times don’t resemble the final product at all to most viewers.
I like your handwritten font very much. It suits the title very well. Both creative and curious. Together with the watercolour background it gives the website a submarine feel. I’m not sure about the colour scheme, though. Somehow this orange-brown doesn’t go well with the blue, but perhaps it will all fall into place once you’ve added other colours in the rest of the site.
bkawalec,
Thanks! Glad you like the font. You don’t like the blue and the tan together? Blue and orange are complimentary colors and usual give design a very nice touch of color. Like I said to Alec above, though, I don’t like the “pink Band-Aid” color that will house the main content. It definitely doesn’t fit! Hope you will stick around to see the final results!
Lauren, you could force the text in the input field to follow the decorative Search image, but somehow I think it’ll confuse readers. You could definitely try. Or you could just place the fancy Search text above the input field.
What bothers me are those navigation buttons. Their dark colours make them stand out too much (the rest of the site is rather subdued). I suppose that once you’ve added some other equally strong elements they will look ok.
Vivien (ib),
I will experiment. Thank you for looking out for the usability of the new design
Barbara,
Yes, I don’t like the nav buttons either. I can’t think of how to make them noticeable without sticking out like a sore thumb. I don’t want to use plain rectangle boxes because they will not fit with the rest of the look. Do you have any ideas?
Jacob informed me about this creative process, when I found hard times to work on my blog redesign. Doodling is somehow effective when I’m run out of ideas. ..
Audee,
(and both have the last name initial “C”!) Well anyway, I’m glad he pointed you over here! Doodling just helps pull those creative ideas out of our minds, doesn’t it? Yay for doodling!
Hi! Which Jacob would that be? We have two
Lauren,
Yeah Audee mentioned she is redesigning her blog so I said to come have a look at your site as your currently doing yours
I finally got my site back online (not emails yet though)