I suppose I should begin with a somewhat brief description of how this site came about.

Creating Digital*Impulse

Design

Arriving at the look and feel for this site has been a somewhat arduous project but I think it’s really turned out ok.  Finding a suitable layout that I actually liked and could use on a regular basis was a task in itself, what with the thousands of available themes and designs available freely.  I must’ve actually settled on a theme at least 4 or 5 times (many of which Steph hated  )!

I should mention from the outset that this entire site’s design and not an inconsiderable amount of its construction were inspired and aided by the many talents and technical expertise of one Stephanie (a.k.a. BebiBulma).  Her help and support during this entire process (which coincidentally is still current and ongoing ) have been instrumental.  From getting me onto WordPress in the first place, then suggesting and setting up plugins, to positioning elements on the page for the notoriously design-unfriendly Internet Explorer and endlessly tweaking bits here and there, Steph’s help has been crucial to the successful functioning of this site.
Thank you, Steph, really. 

Anyways, I always knew I wanted a site that was styled as uniquely as I could manage on this strange new framework compared to other sites.  Being a design freak meant having something that stood out and caught the eye of visitors was a must, so I (with Steph’s help) trawled the intarwebs for hours looking for the right theme.  It was at this stage that she suggested I style it based on an upcoming WindowBlinds theme I have in the works.

MIИIM for WIndowBlinds

Going by the name of MIИIM, this WindowBlinds theme is an attempt at creating something both simple and minimalistic while remaining highly eye-catching, attractive and usable at the same time.

The theme is composed largely of a high-contrast monochrome palette with a splash of colour, in this case Cyan, though additional colours are planned for the WindowBlinds theme with the added bonus of color-awareness for full color control.

So back to the site…

The idea of using MIИIM as a base for the design of this site was ideal, since it’s purpose was largely to be a usable yet striking interface.
So once I found a theme I liked, I set about re-skinning it.  This required a lot of tweaking and modifying of the original theme but once the major hurdles were overcome, the going was fairly steady, if not easy after that.

The most challenging (and dare I say, infuriating ) hurdles I’ve faced so far with this designing in this framework are the comments skinning -which I’ve pretty much finished- and IE compatibility -that in itself is possibly the single most irritating aspect of web design these days.  Microsoft’s continuing refusal to do things differently just makes a web designer’s work that much more difficult.

So the result of all that hard work is what you see in front of you, and while I personally wouldn’t call it complete, I would say it’s definitely usable at this stage.  The rest is tweaking and improving.

What do you think?