So, here’s a new blog banner. (Thanks to Jennifer Durham.) What do you think?
In other news, yesterday I had an odd experience: I wrote a thousand words in 75 minutes on my story, then had to stop cold and immediately leave the house for dinner with an old friend. I felt as though I’d left my kidney behind or something. Very strange…
In other other news, Kelley has a wonderful blog post up, a personal essay about art in hard times. Go read it. You’ll be glad you did.
Nicola Griffith 
It looks good. You have grown up gracefully.
Thank you. The other pic was nearly twenty years old (taken early 1991). I love it, but still…
This pic was taken just about a year ago, in Los Angeles, the day after winning the Lammy for <>And Now We Are Going to Have a Party<>. I was tired, but pretty damn happy.
Hey, well, I like it a lot (if I do say so myself). You were tired, but a real trouper putting up with me and my camera. It won’t surprise anyone to hear that you are looking at and talking to Kelley when this was taken.
Not sure I love the type, but I have no better ideas.
Interesting about the kidney thing.
And I love Kelley’s post. It’s a great essay.
I think it’s beautiful!
I heart your smile.
I love it! (Covet your necklace too.) And I like the charcoal drawing effect.
I like the photo, the high contrast, the white background.
The font bothers me, but I’m like that with most fonts that seem to be handwritten and make me wonder if that’s the person’s writing or just some pretend font. The placement of the title also seems a bit off, but I’m not sure if I want to push it higher or lower yet.
Can we try something? In the Blogger panel, click on the “Layout” tab, then “Edit HTML”. Scroll a few lines down where the “Variable definitions” begin. The seventh variable is:
Variable name=”bordercolor”
description=”Border Color”
type=”color” default=”#ccc”
Change it to:
Variable name=”bordercolor”
description=”Border Color”
type=”color” default=”#fff” value=”#ffffff”
And then click on the SAVE TEMPLATE button. I want to see how it looks without the border. Please? Thanks ;-)
And then we’ll have to Photoshop some sort of localized fading border so it frames the part of the banner with your image. It’s all very clear in my head… *sigh* I’ll have to install all the Adobe crap again (wiped out everything from my computer last month, clean new OS, just running on the basics). Oh, well, my time away from graphics and sound and such couldn’t have lasted forever. Now I want to play.
So now it has no border. Go look.
Needs a border because of the white bleed to white only being on one side. You can create a border, but you’ll have to size the image down to fit inside the blogger box. I wouldn’t mind seeing a very light grey 5px border around it, but not so sure about the fading thing. A
Ok. How about something < HREF="http://shetranslates.blogspot.com/" REL="nofollow">like this?<>
Personally, I don’t like that type or the location. I’d rather see a sans serif type – I liked the one I picked because of the informality. I actually ran that by a graphic arts pro who positioned it close to where it is now. She said that it needed to be closer to Nicola to be connected in some way (or something to that effect), and I tend to agree with her. That one looks a little small and lost out there in the corner. But that’s just my feelling….
I do like the header snugged up to the top. It’s better than no border.
One thing that’s helping yours Karina, is that it’s wider than Nicola’s page. Her page is so small I’m not sure it would work as well. I would like it better if the page size (and the image) were not static, but filled my whole browser. But that’s not the layout Nicola wants/is using. Of course I always like to see pictures bigger. :)
I still vote for the border.
Why do you like it without one?
If you are going to get serious about this Karina, I’ll send you the original file. I don’t want that jpeg to keep being re-saved and degraded.
I’m using the same Blogger template as base, I just changed the banner size from 660px to 720px wide. The font is the same the template is using and the title is not part of the banner image, but Blogger’s default.
I can’t do anything with the original file. I looked for my Adobe Studio boxes to install the programs and I realized they’re in storage and the depot is closed for Victoria Day in Canada. I had to take a screenshot to get around having to install photo editing programs.
I find the border worked okay with the original template because it was meant to contain plain, centred text inside a neat box. The banner’s use of weight and white space made me want something more open. I don’t mind the title being flushed to the left because it aligns with the posts, and the image to the right aligns with the sidebars. In a way, it says: to the left are the words, to the right you’ll find twitters and sound and pictures and movies. But I’m very left-brained when it comes to web design. I can see your point and that of the pro you consulted.
Yes, I see what you mean now. How’d you get her twitter sidebar on your page? Kind of freaky. No don’t say it on here.
Seems kinda odd to me to have the banner pic wider on the right side than the content, but not on the left. It hangs over on the right.
I see you dropped the type down, but I still don’t like the font, and I think it’s too disconnected from the image.
There is something nice about the open feeling of it though.
Jennifer D and Karina, creative collaboration! Ain’t it grand?
<>ssas<>, I wear the necklace a lot. K’s mum, Sharon, bought it for me on her travels. It’s from Acapulco–silver and turquoise.
<>karina, jennifer<>, I’m happy to let you two figure it out between you if it’s something that pleases you to work on. If not I’ll just leave it as it is, maybe experiment with a light grey border at some point. But probably not today…
<>barbara<>, isn’t it :)
Hey, if you’re happy, I’m happy. Except well, I don’t like it with no border now…
I would also like Karina to be happy. :) But I have no time to work on this anymore at at moment.
Frankly, I thought we were done, but clearly a border of some sort is in order. Why don’t you email me Karina if want?
I’m happy if you’re all happy with the current banner. ;-)
I know I’m weird when it comes to web design. Went from a Flash fan to a total graphics-phobe and turned into a usability bible-thumper, unless I’m deliberately trying to turn people away from one kind of content and see how long I can distract them with YouTubes instead.
These days, I do all my web surfing on a customized RSS reader so only the text shows—if there are images embedded in posts, I’ll see those too; otherwise, my experience is pure text. When I come here, or to any other website, all I usually see is the comment box because I’ve already read the content on my RSS and I decided I wanted to join the conversation.
I’m not the average web user, so I’m betting very few will share my desire to get to the story-of-the-day with as little scrolling or incidental media interference as possible.