Almost two months ago the well known designer Jason Santa Maria updated his personal site around the idea that design should be an equal partner to content on the web. I love this idea for all of the reasons he mentioned. More than that it sparked the idea that my own site could be fluid. It can be a place to try new design techniques. This doesn’t have to regimented graphically.
I’ve built this site with ExpressionEngine taking some cues from his architecture, a single post per page, minimal overarching brand, and default design for content that doesn’t get the individual treatment. I would highly recommend Ryan Ireland’s ExpressionEngine Screencasts for those considering ExpressionEngine as a CMS for blogging or building websites.
For the default design I’ve used Times New Roman almost exclusively. The type is set to an 18px baseline grid. I’m using the Blueprint CSS framework to layout the page. The site title and main navigation are set in standard 09_56 by Craig Kroeger of miniml.com.
After getting into web design two years ago with little design or web development training this site will now allow for the graphic experimentation I’m looking for.
Comments
Keith
13 Aug 2008
Nice work Travis. Looks great. I’m totally with you here. I’ve got a few sites in the works that embrace a similar idea (http://www.gettothebottom.com/) in that I want them to be creative, yet minimal and focused on short format content.
I also looked to EE for this and those screencasts of Ryan’s have been amazingly helpful.
Anyway, congrats on the new site. We’ll need to make it over to The Sloop for some Sloopersized celebration soon.
Travis Fleck
13 Aug 2008
Thanks Keith! Looking forward to see what you have in the works. We definitely should. Four of those Sloopersized 34 ouncers did the trick.