Redesign 4: Tarskiesque

I’ve been wanting to redesign Solitude for quite some time now but I figured since my post rate has dropped to a few month in recent times that I should concentrate on getting the post rate back up first.

That said, I had always been picking apart other designs and storing away my favourite snippets; the odd comment layout, a neat footer section, some interesting navigation etc. From that, and a few things I had done in my previous job with grid layouts, I had a pretty good idea how I wanted the new design to look. I wanted it to be relatively minimalist, with clean lines and an orderly and obvious grid layout.

I noticed two different websites, about 2 months apart, that had a lot of the features that I wanted, and noticed that they were oddly similar. A little investigation turned up that they were both using variants on a pre-built WordPress theme called Tarski. It was then that I decided that I’d be better off taking that theme too, and tuning it over time to fully achieve the effect I wanted. It was already 90% of the way there.

I consider the design to be a work in progress, though it’s perfectly serviceable as-is and will only be worked on slowly. Let me know if you have any suggestions for it. The first thing to go will be the header, as I’ve long had a particular image in mind for this.

Fun facts:

• This is my first redesign (beyond seasonal variants) since September 2004 when I introduced the previous design, Hazy Morning.
• Hazy Morning had that big “flower” in the top right, as some people pointed out? It was actually a heavy processed and sharpened picture of the sun.
• The header image I have in mind for the new theme I created in 2006. I just didn’t come up with what I wanted for the rest of the design until now.

You’ll be seeing the finishing touches sooner or later.