My sister had a baby last year and immediately caught the photography bug. She’s taken some amazing photos with her digital SLR camera and has decided that she wants a serious venue to display her shots.
She’s found a number of photoblogs she admires and has ask me to design one for her. The sites she likes are all wide, one column designs and she wants to have a nice animated flash box in the header.
The flash content should be fairly easy so the main challenge for me will be getting WordPress to bend to my will. I’ve never done a one column blog before but WordPress is rather flexible so I think I should be able to accomplish my goal with a minimum of hair pulling. My plan, at the moment, is to use CSS to place three sidebars in the “footer’ which will allow my sister some degree of customization using widgets.
I’ve come up with three designs for her to choose from. Each of these has variations using different colours or design elements. For brevity, I’ve chosen one example of each design to display here. The actual size of the content will be 990px across.
“Modern”
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The main contenders for the final design appear to be this and the following one. I like this design as it’s clean and simple but still incorporates a few unusual elements to set it apart from an out-of-the-box blog theme. I’ll have to employ some flash text replacement for the entry headings as well as adding a gradient.
The look is attractive, uncluttered and classy.
“Fun”
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I tried to make this design fun with a childlike quality. Many of my sisters photos are of families and kids so this style is not only appropriate but compliments her subject matter and allows for a more relaxed vibe.
This design will also require some flash text replacement to achieve the handwritten look of the entry titles.
“Elegant”
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I think we’ve pretty much dismissed this design. It’s a little too formal/pretty for a long running blog. It has a wedding invitation feel. Maybe I can use if for a wedding photographer’s blog some day. I post it here merely as a curiosity.
Next…
My sister has the designs in her hands and is currently deliberating. Once she chooses one we’ll go over it again and fine tune the details and make final adjustments. Once she’s happy with the look I’ll start building.
If any interesting challenges arise while I’m creating the site I’ll post the details here and discuss the various solutions.
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