As some of you know, I do web design. I made jakedahn.com in about 8 hours time. I think that 8 hours is pretty fast to be making a website, so I figured I would do sort of a case study, or just go over everything that I did. As I go through this, I will probably notice the things that I have done right, and the things that I’ve done wrong.

So here’s the plan. I will be writing about different aspects of the design in different parts. So this may turn out to be a 5 or maybe even 10 post series. I can go over anything from the concept planning, drafting, images, lists, posts, css, valid code, and other stuff. I’m not really sure at the moment how far I will go with this, but I will go through the whole creation of the site.

There will be some people who have more experience, and know more about what I’m talking about that I do, so if you think I’ve done something wrong, or there is simply a better way to do things, please, just let me know. I take criticism fairly well ;-) So without further ado… here goes nothin’!…..

For the first part of the “series,” if you can call it that, I would like to talk about the concept, how I came up with it, and some of the alternative layouts/colors I was thinking about using.

At first I was leaning towards a WIDE and dark kind of layout. Something that could be multi columned and have lots of space, for small stuff, like links and such. This turned out kind of like this:

I really liked this one. I was actually going to use this exact layout for the new version of jakedahn.com. I even had it all finished up for wordpress, and it was all good to go. Then I thought, “Well, I’m going to be writing a whole lot more, and if there’s going to be more content, having a narrow column for posting is going to blow!” So I trashed it, right there and then. Started all over.

I then went on to something that had a similar concept. It was still dark, but this time it was wide. I wanted it wide to display the content better. I really liked this one too, but there was just something lame about it. I guess I just didn’t really like the colors of it. This time it looked like this:

So I decided to go red. The red version, is what you see now. Basic red header, and footer. I have never used red before, in any of my designs, so I thought it would be nice for a change. The thing I like most about this design is the shadow, on the header and footer. It just “flows” If you ask me, that’s the kind of thing that belongs on blogs. Things that flow, and that’s really what I went for.

That’s it for part 1, next time there will be something about another piece of the design.

Thanks for reading! :D