I was about naming the title as The Struggle behind the revamp, but thought
better of it, and left it only as a story behind the Revamp.
This reconstruction took longer than I thought. Staring at all of the
random display of the photo galleries, I knew I couldn't ignore the problem, and
postpone my reconstruction of the photo galleries any longer, so I took the images and made thumbnails, hundreds
and hundreds of them. By the end of the day, I literally claim myself completely insane. I could not
endure looking at another Tony
Leung picture.
Organizing photos was only part of my problem.
Re-designing is another part. I never claimed to be a designer,
though I did spend time playing with Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks,
Freehand, psp or whatever graphic programs out there, but designing is just
hard.
For any kind of design, you would get lucky if 5 out of 10 people like what
you did. Most likely the other 5 would totally trash your work and thought
it's nothing but a piece of crap. That's understandable since everyone
comes from very different background and develops quite distinct taste in color,
contrast and the meaning of art.
I have met people who likes nothing but plain black and white, also I have
met people who would like to put the whole color spectrum on their page.
And worse yet, I have the unfortunate luck of working for a manager who wants
bouncing red balls on the web pages. His artistic taste is quite beyond
me.
Since this is only a fan site, the standard of the artistic design is totally
up to me. I could choose to design it anyway I wanted it to be. But
I have a minimum standard for myself. That is: it had to be unique
and different from my last design. Else, why change it. Why waste
the time if everything looks exactly the same.
With that in mind, I created several templates. But they are not quite what I wanted.
Finally today, after finish writing more than 30 stored procedures (trying to
speed up one of my projects), I took another look at my design, did a little
twist. There it is. I think it's finally presentable. By no
means it's the best, but so far I have drained my creative brain, it's the best
I can come up with now. I just hope I won't hate it later.
I have a tendency to dislike or even hate my own design after I sleep on it
for a day or two. I hope this won't be the case.
I chose warm colors (pale orange and violet) in my last color scheme.
But now I am favoring green and yellow-ish green. Blue is a bit more
conservative, still one of my fave colors, but it's not as attractive as the
bright green. Some of you might be offended by such bright green, but
hopefully you will end up like it.
The gray goes well with all kind of color. I always love to incorporate
a little gray into my design. Here is a word of suggestion: next
time when you are stuck with your design, use gray as a base and build on
it. Strange enough, gray brings the best out of a matching
color. I don't know how to explain it, but you know what I mean when you
see it.
A final word: Thank god I am not a designer. Never attempting to be
one. It's so hard and so incredibly draining. I will stick with this
design for six months. Just hoping I am able to stand it in the fifth
month. :-)