A new design has been long overdue – back in the day I used to update my site’s theme, what, once a month? The previous theme has been up for nearly a year. Crazy. Must remember to find some kind of middle ground for that.

Anyway, a bit of background to this new design. I normally open Photoshop, put some music on, and get lost in designing for a good seven or eight hours straight. I like to get the vast majority of the design done in one go, fall asleep exhausted but happy at about 3am, then wake up a few hours later for the inevitable tweaks and imperfections I missed whilst half asleep. Waking up and remembering that I created a new design that I’m happy with is one of the best things ever. I know that sounds pathetic, but designing for myself is one of my happy things. And, obviously, I don’t get to do it as much as I used to.

This theme, however, was completed in stolen hours here and there; perhaps that’s one of the reasons why it’s ended up being quite patchworky. The (anonymous) quote is from a book that was being sold at an art gallery I visited a couple of months ago (in the interests of not being pretentious, I’d like to clarify at this point that the gift shop is by far my most favourite part of visiting any gallery or museum).

The quote really struck a chord with me after the year I’ve had; creating is part of my core. It makes me restless, impatient and frequently dissatisfied, but it also gives me an incredible amount of pleasure. It’s pure escapism, and it’s not escapism which has ad breaks or a set ending. At the end of it, I have something that expresses who I am, that works as another outlet for making me who I am. In many ways the web is the perfect medium for me, because it’s always changing and always demands more. I constantly create, re-create and perfect. I can decide I’m not happy with something and change it accordingly…and frequently do. There is never an end, and that’s exactly what I love about it.

My interruptions for this design were generally caused by timing issues. Normally my design work is done on a Friday night (I know, I know) and it’s born out of a desire (desperation, even) to create something visual, since most of what I do on a daily basis is heavily text-based. I hadn’t done any design work since the summer – or at least nothing as big as a theme – and I was kind of thinking ‘How do I get back into it?’ As it turns out, I didn’t need to force myself – it’s so ingrained in me it’s part of who I am now. I just developed an overwhelming need to spend some time on my own creating things, specifically web things. Overwhelming to the extent that I couldn’t wait for a weekend.

I pushed myself too much at first; I find designing on my Mac difficult, and I was stressed and depressed when I first started this design. It showed. It was pretty lazy, I didn’t have a clear idea of how it would come together, and I nearly scrapped the thing multiple times (probably 50% of things I design never get used, mostly because I’m not happy with them). I came back to it a few days later with a different, creative mindset. Instead of scrapping the original idea as planned, I simply developed it out more and spent more time on the details.

Normally I start with an idea, and then go off and end up creating something entirely different. This time, the work was very bitty all the way through. Here are some rough, raw samples of things I played around with before I completed the final design:

At one point I left the original design completely and tested a more minimal look.

Testing how the backgrounds would sit and look.

The header image has about 30 layers in total.

I wanted something a bit more elegant and mature. The last theme was pretty warm and fun, which had its own merits, but it was definitely time for something a bit more subtle in terms of colour and style. It’s colder, but in many ways it’s also softer. I’m not one to follow design trends, I prefer to create something that works for my content, rather than stylistic changes purely for design. It has to be practical, or it’s not going to stick around for long, and I simply don’t have the time to create theme after theme (unfortunately). A new theme always inspires me to create new content, so hopefully I’ll be encouraged to get creating more, especially as evenings are getting colder and shorter all the time.

I’ve tested and tweaked the theme quite a lot in various browsers on both Mac and Windows, but my testing isn’t exhaustive and I’m only human. There are bound to be things that aren’t quite right here and there, so please drop me a comment and let me know if you spot anything :)