I generally prefer the playing around phase of maybe redesigning one’s site to the nuts and bolts I-can’t-get-the-CSS-to-work-in-Netscape part of it all. I’d like more colours and pictures. I wonder if I could get away with something like this and still get taken seriously. You know, as an academic. Probably not – it looks more like a teenager’s intimate web diary. If I were a skilled graphic designer perhaps I could make it ironic, multivalent. That’d be cool
Another thing is that while I really want to keep the front page of my site a blog, it’d be nice if people could actually find stuff. You know, my publications, or what I think about weblogs and education, or the links for that talk they just heard me give. Anders Fagerjord (whose front page I love except it’s not a blog) recently wrote about Derek Powazek‘s new design, which does combine a bit of bloggishness with photos and so on. Not quite me, though.
I tried making a banner to paste across the top of my site too, thinking I could just add that and not change the rest. It gives entirely the wrong signals, though. Well, not entirely. Just that they’re not the only signals I want to be transmitting.
matt
How basing the, ahem, brand on a Jerome-in-study-sort of thing, maybe this (by Antonella da Messina): http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/jerome.html
… but of course doctored to show your fizzog. Maybe an image of a gleaming Mac in one of those dusty corners.
Helge
Yes, we WOULD like to see some graphics created by Jill/txt Walker.
matt
oops (>_
Thomas
Does your blog have to be “academic-looking”? Your choice of colors and personal/professional blogging breaks the boundaries of academic writing, and that is really good. Why should not your images reflect the double nature of your blog? Maybe images of things that are of interest to you and signals your research/life passions can be of interest to the reader? Good luck in redesigning, always fun to play around with new designs.
mjones
I’ll be interested to see where you go with this, as I’m thinking some of the same things myself: I rarely touch my “real” site now that I am blogging, and would dearly love to amalgamate them somehow.
Elin
I think you should go for it. If “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” is t r u l y true, then academics should not have any problems putting up with your design – after all – the content is still the same – they should have no problem figuring it out.
Yay! Go for it. Make it PINK link mine! (seriously – that was a joke:-)
Bottom line: It is MUCH more interesting to read/view people who are expressing their personalities than those who are conforming to the norm.
E.
fiviecats
This sounds like a great student project. 🙂
…
Helge
Oh no…
Jill
Don’t worry Helge, I think you students have plenty to deal with already 🙂