I thought it was time for a new clean layout, so I invested a couple of hours on the new design project. It took of code tweaking and some creativity, but I finally finished a new layout for Day Mind XPression.

I was tempted to stick with a traditional design that distinctively separated various elements into different categories of attributes, such as color or position. With this current design, however, I wanted to reflect a sense of open minded atmosphere, so I started with the color blue and worked my way to add subtle decorations here and there. I wanted to remove the tight clutter environment, so I moved all the list links to the bottom of the web page.

Picking out the font color was quite difficult, because I wanted the text to be readable and blend well with the blue background. After several color experiments, I decided to go with a variant of gray and light blue for all the textual elements.

One of the major problems I encountered during the coding was some gamma discrepancies between the CSS colors and the PNG colors. This problem made the shades of blue from the images different in lightness than the shades generated by the CSS style sheets, even though they represent the same color. I corrected the problem by removing the gamma information of the images, and all the elements blended well together.

I am very satisfied with the end product. For once, the website looks distinctively different from other websites, but the layout is not too confusing. The image transparency effects looks great, and the design is quiet, peaceful, and serene tone to it. I am proud!