Most of my previous web design endeavors have been – for lack of a better term – minimalistic. With hniw.us, I wanted to do something different. I am not the best when it comes to graphic design, but I have been learning Illustrator (and forgetting everything I ever knew about Photoshop) over the past year or so, and I decided that I wanted to try something different. By different, I wanted to try a design that involved more than simple line-art and austere aesthetics.
Earlier this year I read an article on grunge designs at Smashing Magazine and I’ve been wanting to try my hand at something along those lines. What I have may not be grunge, in the strictest sense of the word, but I feel that it fits with what I was primarily aiming for. Let it be know that I am first and foremost a chemist; I do this for fun, as a hobby you could say, and I am by no means an accomplished or even marginally passable artist. I do this because I would rather attempt – and possibly fail – to design my own site themes. I enjoy the challenges and it forces me to engage my creative side. Sometimes this doesn’t always work as expected and I am thankful that I have a wellspring of real artistic talent to draw from, to let me know when I’ve gone astray or begun to invoke bad practices.
And thus we come to the reason why I began this rambling. In the past, if I had images they were usually very small and easily replaced with CSS3. That is no longer the case. I have 8 images that weigh in at just under 400kb. I know, it isn’t much but I have always been fond of the fact that the code for my site was generally larger than the image files. I may still be able to reach that goal, but it would be due to overly complicated loops and horrendous Google search forms. I am proud of the fact that I was able to fit the basic site layout in 8 files at under 400kb (those are Snow Leopard kilobytes, or 1000 bytes and not 1024 bytes) and future images should revert to their relatively small sizes once again, but it was a bit of a shock when I began to export images. I’ve done something that I have never done before and that is to use jpegs as background images.
I still have more work to do, but progress is being made and with any luck, my image directory will be smaller than either Cellar Heat Light or Dark, themes that I took inspiration from during the initial design stages. Stay tuned, I’ve got one week left and with any luck I will have this mostly complete and ready for testing and proper feedback by the time I great my next crop of young, impressionable minds. Until then, enjoy your winter break as I am trying to enjoy mine.
Also coming soon…GeishaArmy.com and Jerryfish.net
Everyone has been looking for ways to free ourselves from the reliance upon fossil fuels to feed our ever growing needs for more power. This has lead to a resurgence in alternative energy technologies, running the gamut from photovoltaics (PV) to wind to biodiesel and even hydrogen (the later being geared more towards vehicles). [...]
I purchased hniw.us on the 15th of Dec. 2009 and now, on the 31st of December, I can proudly say that it is up and mostly running. This is a new beginning, so those of you familiar with deconstructiverelativity.org hopefully won’t be too upset to learn that none of the content on that site [...]
