This was my own blog for years. If there was ever a proving ground for my ability manipulating HTML, CSS and Flash, this was it. Its final form was, by far, the most ambitious, with complex page-specific and category specific designs, a Flash header with random image display, a complex, dynamic sidebar and the integration of the Yahoo mp3 player. I started it in 2001 as a simple repository for creative works and a sort of online resume. It morphed into a blog about my adventures in Hollywoodland, which was the name ot bore for a while, and then was reinvented in 2006 to be… what? I never really decided, which is why I’ve moved on to new projects. But it remains a fine example of what I can put together.

Suzanne Hansen’s blog is an example of the really stripped-down, minimal designs that I like. It’s clean, unadorned and bright, per her specific instructions. And again, here’s an example of the image carousel I worked into Heather Jagger’s blog, re-imagined to suit Suzanne’s tastes.  This was part of some recent design tweaks that also included adding the nifty logo beside the blog posts, which we think adds a touch of detail and color to the blog body that had been missing before.

Heather Jagger wanted a clean, attractive blog, much in the style of many of the blogs I’ve created. Most prominent on the site, of course, is the image carousel “television” just below the header. This took some doing. I used j-Carousel as a jumping-off point, but tweaked it so that Heather could post her own images. It’s set up in such a way as to automatically display the most recently uploaded images first in order to give it a chronological relevance.

I’m rather fond of Heather’s blog. It has a nice, warm look and it seem to suit her irreverent, fun style.

I’ve designed Dana’s blog twice. The first time was way back in the dark ages of my history as a blog designer (2005-ish). She was my second client. It was a fun little project and it was a decent blog while it lasted. But then in late 2008 she decided she wanted to move, upgrade and improve the blog, so we decided to start from scratch using WordPress on a new server at Dreamhost. The primary objective was to create something fun and attractive to push things forward into the new decade. Using the colors of her newly designed logo and a kind of whimsical approach, we put together her new, fun blog.

Design highlights:

The multi-gallery Flash-based slide show, which utilizes the wonderful Slideshow Pro.

Comments are above the post, emphasizing the community potential in the blog world. What people say about your posts is just as important as the posts themselves. Perhaps even more so.

Photographer Kellie Kano was looking for a large format, clean blog design that wasn’t too complicated. The design approach was relatively simple. I wanted to isolate each post on it’s own separate block and lay a strip at the bottom of each one where the comments could reside, so people could read them without having to go to the individual post page.

Kellie also wanted a smooth, animated Flash header in order to add a touch of dynamicism to the top of the blog. We came up with a simple fade-in image design with a sliding logo. Most important to the design was that she could create and upload the images herself to a folder on her server, then with each page load, one of those images is selected at random.

In the parlance of kitten-dom, this site has just opened its little eyes and is beginning its first feeble steps. We haven’t even started batting at yarn yet. But soon we’ll be all gussied up, ready to field questions and receive catnip.

Stay tuned.