The new plan

So I’ve been working on the new design for the homepage and the blog. I had originally planned to phase out the homepage, but have decided that it serves as a very good marketing piece and it’s finally starting to get some search engine love. So I’m going to revamp it. I’m outlining the new plan mostly to get it written down, but also to give anyone who might have an interest something to look forward to… ;-).

I’m going to hold off on putting the new blog design up until November, firstly because I’m pink for October and I don’t want to redesign twice (yes, I’m supportive but lazy), and secondly I’m getting some traffic from CSSTux and I’d hate to have my screenshot be a lie, at least for the first month. Of course, I seem to have the lowest ranked site on the front page, but I’ve noticed that the highest ranked sites all look the same. I should have submitted my web 2.0 joke version. I take a certain amount of pride in using semantic markup and yet not looking like a web 2.0 site. Ross over at 3.7designs felt much the same a while back…

And now for the plans…

The Homepage

I’m envisioning the homepage being much more of a marketing piece. Something that could really get someone excited about our work and our capabilities. I don’t think we show our best work in the best light right now, so I’m working on a better way to show our portfolio and include more of our print, video, animation, illustration and photography in addition to the websites. As most of you know I’m fairly opposed to the use of Flash, so I need a dynamic way to show the pieces with semantic markup and make them look even more exciting than they really are ;-). It’s really going to come down to some skillful photoshop work and a good layout, with as few javascript tricks as possible.

I’m leaving behind the light on dark look and switching back to the dark on light with nicer typography and a more professional look. This is going to be true of the blog as well. More serif fonts. There’s going to be more PHP and less javascript, although non-obtrusive javascript will still have its place in small doses. I doubt I’ll do anything that will actually require the full prototype.js library, but we’ll see.

Speaking of Flash and javascript… I’m working on a header for the piece that has very subtle motion at long intervals. You almost wouldn’t notice it. It will be included using SWFObject and the div it replaces will contain a semantic h1 headline and h2 subhead, replaced in the CSS by a header jpeg. Then I’ll switch out the whole div with SWFObject when the circumstances allow for it (javascript and the flash plugin are present).

For the purposes of SEO, the site will be broken up into multiple sections, with as little AJAX as possible. I learned from my Crazyegg experiments that people weren’t always figuring out the sliding panes I was using, especially when they had very small text to indicate that they expanded. I did figure out a better interface for handling it, but it’s time to try something new anyway.

There will be a PHP/javascript stylesheet switcher that will offer slightly different layouts based on browser width. I’ve found that to be fairly effective and it’s something that needs to be implemented on this blog. My Mint stats show most of my viewers have fairly large screens, but I know the layout has some serious problems when you shrink the browser to 800px.

The Blog

The blog, the one you’re reading, will be returning to a fixed width layout. It will be returning to dark on light text. It will be drastically simplifying. I’m going to cut it down to the bare essentials for each type of page. That means cutting out things like redundant archive links and RSS aggregation. I’m going to cut out the random photos (they’re in the gallery), the oversized RSS feed button (just a text link), the tag cloud (it’s on the archives page), and trim down the links section. I’m seriously considering adding an accordion effect to the sidebar to neaten it up. It’s not like most people read all that crap anyway.

The About, Services and Portfolio links are going away. They’ll be moved back to the main site which will be reachable through the “Circle Six Design” link. The contact link will be moved into the main menu and will link to the contact page of the main site.

I’m spending a lot more time on typography this time around. The layout and readability are of utmost importance to me right now. I’ve noticed that my favorite sites are very clean and have near-perfect typography. I don’t know why that doesn’t carry through to my designs. I’m taking a whole new perspective on this one. And I’m doing the whole thing in TextMate ;-). I can never get enough plugs in for that thing.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to unveiling both pieces. The homepage will come first, and I’ll announce it when it’s ready.