Redesign Time
Last March I decided to redesign this site. I wanted it to look more “put together.” It was the first time that I’d done a proper mockup for this site before I actually built it. I posted the mockup on Flickr, waited for some feedback, made some adjustments, and then went about coding it. I’m pretty sure that design set a record for longest continuous design on this blog – 9 months. Not bad, considering I used to average a new design every 2-3 months or even less when I was younger and had more time on my hands.
This time I wanted to try something else. I’d been poking around in Photoshop for weeks now, but couldn’t come up with anything I really liked. I knew I wanted something clean, simple, and organized, but a little more “grown up.” I was sick of the blue. My main issue with the old design was the gigantic FOREVER-DIGITAL header. It was getting on my nerves. It was time to scale down.
For the last 4-5 designs, I’ve used 281 as a skeleton theme. I pretty much changed everything about the CSS, but I liked the basic structure. After a few years of hacking up CSS and tweaking the skeleton, it was starting to get a bit messy. So I went in search of a new theme to use as my skeleton. Sandbox won.
I also decided to design it locally instead of my typical “UNDER LIVE CONSTRUCTION” banner. It put less pressure on the process and let me do it at a pace that fit my schedule. Highly recommended. Check out the Web Designer Wall tutorial.
And now it’s done. If you’ve been around here for a while, you’ll probably feel compelled to point out that I always end up reverting to these colors. What can I say? I like them! I really tried to pay more attention to the details this time – line spacing, font choice and such. I hope it made a difference!
For posterity:
I’ve gone through the site countless times looking for bugs and such. I think I got them all, but please let me know if you find any! I hope you enjoy the new look!
[EDIT: thanks to britta's suggestions, I've pushed around a few things and made the bottom headers "twitter bird blue." Yay for details!]
Forever-Digital is a look inside the life and mind of 
hey, i like it! it’s easy on the eyes – readable and makes sense. i usually get turned off by pink, but these are nice warm shades. and yay cute little twitter bird.
i think i would add a little more margin to the left side of the post text, so that it lines up with the header text and so the right & left text margins are more balanced. and ooh what about making the bottom headers match the blue bird? i’m not sure about the green.
for a while i’ve wanted to redesign my own site with dark text on a white background, but i’ve never quite figured out how to make that work while keeping what i like about the design. it’s like readability vs. ooh shiny.
That twitter birdy is cute. :D
@coxy – Thanks! I got it from Smashing Magazine’s On Stage Icon set.