Yes, I know I said I would get a new thegrotto theme done quickly, but a combination of things led to that not happening, and then I got kind of busy for a while with jobsearching.
Not that great of an excuse really – mostly the problem is the web design equivalent of “writer’s block” that has haunted me for some time. I do have the ideas, and I they are achievable, but as soon as I sit down with Photoshop to mock up a new theme, I cannot seem to pass even the simplest of creative hurdles. As soon as I try something I think will be cool, it looks rubbish – and rather than push on and make it look interesting somehow, I jump back to the drawing board. I just cannot find a path to proceed.
The annoying thing is that this has true of most of my creative endevours for the past couple years, and it’s really getting to the point where I cannot see a light at the end of any “creative” tunnel. There is so much music I have conceptualised but not executed, so much writing I have begun and not completed, so many redesigns of this website that have not made it off the squared paper.
Regarding thegrotto, One solution is to just hash together something simple for now, and tweak it into shape as I go, but I’m not very fond of that idea, because I know I am capable of more.
So, I guess what I should do is lay out exactly what it is I had intended to do, if for no other reason than to get it out there.
- I was attempting to merge thegrotto into timidelfdesigns by making thegrotto into the blog section of a combined timidelfdesigns website, and move away from using the .tk forwarding (as it masks true page URLs ) for thegrotto.
- At one point I considered using a light/dark dichotomy to differentiated between thegrotto and timidelfdesigns, to distinguish the two as halves of a whole.
- The colour scheme I am looking at is, as usual, red. I still like white text on black, but likely muting the tones and desaturating it a little. It would be off-white on off-black for the body text.
- I was looking to have a subtle texture to the background that was somehow personal and specific, rather than just generic grungy – likely by using photographic textures of my own.
- Sticking to a two column layout, but open to having the sidebar on either side.
That was the gist of the idea, which basically hasn’t changed through a good ten or so different variations. Having been unable to land on something I’m fully happy with, I think perhaps I should throw some or all of those constraints away, at least temporarily, and begin from scratch.
Looks like a nice rain out, I think I’ll go take a break. Got a job interview at 9.00AM so won’t really spend a lot of time working on it tonight, but I’ve got my Oblique Strategies cards at the ready, and a blank slate, and perhaps admitting I was “wrong” is the first step to moving forward… Or perhaps I’ll be back where I am now after another ten failed designs.
Hooray.
Oh, and this month I have mostly been listening to:
- Simon and Garfunkel – Wednesday Morning 3AM
- The Stares – Meridians (at last!)
- Talking Heads – Little Creatures
