minimalist marmalade moon
Today I’m going to turn in a different more minimalist direction, opening up spaces and working with typography. Creating a focused, peaceful zen space.
But first a thank you for your helpful feedback on yesterday’s experiment with the Quick Start Wizard. A Peréz liked the colours and the header, Tracy liked the colors and described the feeling as “it’s like sitting in a cozy living room with glass of wine and great conversation” and David Bennett offered a helpful suggestion for how I could fix the crowded menu. And several readers voted in the poll, offering their view on the Quick Start Wizard! Thank you!
Creating a Harmonious Canvas
- Stripped the design of colour, reducing it to black white and grey.
- Adjusted the columns to be more harmonious, basing the widths on the Golden Ratio (or Divine Proportion)
- After hours of experimenting with fonts, I settled on using the humanist sans-serif typeface Lucida Grande
Thoughts
- I really wish I didn’t need to have a sidebar at all! It brings a lot of clutter to the layout. The way blogs work, it’s really difficult to get rid of all together… Still, I feel so much gets thrown at us on the internet and I’d like to go for a more peaceful feeling.
- I think some more space is needed between the main area for content (to the left) and the sidebar (to the right). Not sure how to do that.
- I’ll have to let this sink in during the weekend. Listen to your ideas. Tweak.
- Once I feel the basic canvas is right, I’ll be turning my attention to different areas like the footer, the header and the sidebar. Adding more colour and graphics as I go.
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Tags: design, divine proportion, fonts, golden ratio, Headway, layout, Live Web Site Make Over, make over, palette, re-design, tools, typography, usability, WordPress
Marmalade Moon Design Wizard Version
The 4 Easy Steps of Headway’s Quick Start Wizard
When you first open Headway’s Visual Editor, you’re greeted by a Quick Start Wizard. Lets give it a spin and see what it can create!
Headway Quick Start Wizard
- First the Wizard asks me to pick a layout. I select a layout with a sidebar to the right.
- Next I have the option to upload a banner (size 960×150), so I quickly create a banner using a recent design (the Golden Ratio Autumn Wallpaper) and the colour palette I’ve put together for this project. Headway generates a palette based on my banner image and lets me pick three colours to work with as well as a background colour, by simply dragging and dropping the colours into the boxes.
- Then the Quick Start Wizard lets me pick one font for my titles and one for my content. I pick Lucida Grande for headings and Georgia for content.
- That’s it! Headway autmagically generates a design for me in seconds!
Ta Da!
Well, here it is. The automagic design. Depending on how happy you are with the results this could be the final design, or you could use it as a starting point and go on tweaking your design from here. What I like about it at this point is that Headway automatically adds a search field, pagination at the bottom of the page, a link to your RSS-feed and a 404 Error Page Template.
What do you think of the Quick Start Wizard?
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Tomorrow
Although I’m impressed with what the Quick Start Wizard accomplished, this design doesn’t quite feel like my style. I’ll be back again tomorrow with the next few steps in this redesign process.
In Depth
Check out the video below, if you want to know more in depth how to use the Quick Start Wizard and the Visual Editor in Headway. Actually, if you watch this video, you’ll know as much about Headway as I do!
Learning Headway 1 – Beginning Steps from Headway Themes on Vimeo.
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My Design Ideas
- elegant simplicity
- a website that’s easy to use and read
- beautiful typography
- richness and depth
- reflect the design of my new Goal Kits
- harmonious layout based on the golden ratio (the divine proportions)
- vibrant, funky colours
- use color to make it easy to change the look and feel of the site
- a website that works well both on computers and handheld devices
Tools for the Design:
- Which fonts to use? Go with licenced web fonts or stick with free web fonts?
- Golden Ratio Calculator
- My Colour Palette
Preparations
Create a colour palette and make a note of what the hexadecimal color codes for displaying those colours on the web are.
pale cappucino #ECBEA8 | coral #D25B59 | orange #F07241
faded sunlight #F6B961 | cream yellow #FBE9BD
aubergine #300030 | deep purple #42083E | royal purple #5E0F58 | plum #864459
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iPhone photography: Chinese cherry blossom
March
I’m ready for spring, for the thick layer of snow and ice to melt. The light is returning, but this time of year can feel heavy going. It’s been a tedious week with dentists appointments (and bills), a broken internet and phone connection and a variety of interruptions in the shape of workmen and packages.
It’s the small things that light up my days.
Highlights
- Visiting the museum of Photography with my Mum
- Twigs with Chinese cherry blossom
- Freshly ground espresso beans
- Bunches of daffodils
- Anders Zorn‘s minimalist colour palette of Ivory Black, Titanium White, Yellow Ocre, and Cadmium Red Light (Vermillion).
Zorn palette
Tags: minimalist, oils, palette
iPhone Photography: crayfish color palette
This colour palette based on a photo I snapped at our annual crayfish party this weekend. Late summer brings out fiery reds, hot oranges and darker blue skies. Colour is one of the things that inspire me deeply. Colour sensations can light me up, illuminate me with joy.
Six links for colour inspiration
Tags: colour, palette
