Round #1 with ninjafocus

[greg.mcausland]

Hey guys..

So last week after a particularly stressful day, I have the overwhelming urge to get my feelings down on hardcopy, just to get a few things out of my head. So much so I was tempted to get wordpress installed on ninjafocus.com and fire out a post using the default theme.

However, I gave myself a shake, said stop being a lazy arse, it will take you 30 min to layout something basic that will at least be your own.

So I set to work.. Here’s the result

http://www.ninjafocus.com/sandbox/ninjafocus/

Just a straight up mock html. After I had gotten that done and out, I didn’t know if I liked it or not, I kinda felt there was 100 things wrong with it and started beating myself up about the whole affair. So It’s not yet made it onto a working wordpress installation.

I mean the goal with it was to have something a little different from the usual uber clean stuff i’ve been attempting to master for the past 6 months and be slightly more original.

With that thought in mind I copied an old rant of my own from an old blog and put it up in what I thought would be a cool way to display posts.

http://www.ninjafocus.com/sandbox/ninjafocus/raa.html

To build upon that idea, I was thinking of implementing some sort of mad horizontal page-scrolling to encompass the whole post if it was to take up more than 3 columns, as an alternative to regular page scroll. Using jquery to nice it up.

While at the time I thought it was cool and quirky, 30 min later I started thinking, is it just a little too much? is it gonna be hard to read, annoying to navigate.. I dunno

I have a habit of doing stuff then within 30 min hating myself for coming up with such a stupid idea in the first place.

The ultimate goal of this was just to get my own little spot online where I could post some stuff, i find writing theraputic !

so what do you think.. stupid ideas, crap design? Worth converting into a working theme or do I need a slap back onto the drawing board.

Always at your mercy,
Greg

cheers :)

[Luminated]

Still unsure about the design but I do agree with you about the media’s role in "the great recession." A recession is a state of mind, imo. I know it’s affected people in a real way and there are areas of the world that are truly hurting…but the media has stepped on the gas. Or really, the people that believe it…they are the real source of the widespread panic.

Anyway, this is a web design feedback forum so I will say: Love that footer. The rest is pretty simplistic but I would expect such on any site with the word ‘ninja’ in it. Cheers.

[dcp3450]

needs some balance for the top. When i think ninja I think sleek and balance (and killing samari). I found myself trying to scroll up, automatically assuming there should be something there.

Would be nice to see more of a contrast between the text and the background. I found it hard to read at times and started to strain my eyes a bit. I read a good deal of blogs so I’m used to reading a screen most of the day. Maybe play with font for this issue.

I tried font-family: Trebuchet, Helvetica, sans-serif; and font-weight: bold; on .ninjacolumn P and it was easier to read. Could be me though. Just a thought.

[greg.mcausland]

good comments guys, thanks..

the font I was rolling with was Georgia.. maybe not the best

the format of the text is also very much debatable.. I was far from convinced. Although I think the example I gave was probably pretty bad, because its not well panned with imagery etc..

I think however DCP hit a nerve saying that he expected more above.. which is perfectly fair enough because i purposefully forced the header to the bottom of the page in an effort to be a bit different, when the ultimately I have simply confused the reader…

That’s pretty point and case shouting the layout is in effective..

great feedback, thanks chaps

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