Design120

Launching the new Design120

Posted on 05. Jun, 2009 in Design

I’ve always been a big follower of Adii Rockstar, so when he got WooThemes started I thought it cool to do a mod of the free ‘Metamorphosis’ theme (by WooThemes) rather than code a complete site myself. Not to say that I couldn’t do this myself, but during the past few weeks I’ve been on the road through Europe for windsurfing and have hardly enough time to sit and build a complete new website. Modifying a theme is actually a little more fun as you can spend more time on the fun things like semantics, aesthetics, graphics, colour and fung-shui. Which for someone like me, who’s more interested in the front-end of the website than tinkering in the back-end, this is actually pretty cool.

I started by taking out the standard two-tone Woo background and used a CSS random rotating series of 4 large images which I morphed myself in Photoshop. I seem to be doing a lot of websites with the background-attachment: fixed; (which makes the background stay fixed in one spot, and the content scrolls over the top – cool effect!) but I just really like this effect! 

Then I used a 50px transparent .png with 50% transparencyas a background filler for the content-box on the main page. I also changed the fonts of some of the headings and removed the borders. Wasn’t a whole lot of work, but I think the finished product deviates enough from the original theme to make it worthwhile.

The premise of this latest site design was to relaunch the site in a more professional sense and showcase some of the other things I have done in my life outside of the design work. An online CV of sorts.

I wonder what people think about using somebody else’s theme (albeit, a paid Premium theme) on a website that’s showcasing your own webdesign skills? I guess the market these days is looking for cheaper, more professionally looking websites made in the shortest time possible and modifying themes seems to fulfill these requirements much more cost-effectively than completely coding a website yourself (which is kinda a lot of work!).

Tags: coding, launch, website design