Again? Yes, yes. I know. Sometimes this is the problem with us designers, that is we are never satisfied about what we did no matter how much time we put into it. Having a website of your own is an ever-on-going project. Every week there is something new on the web. Resulting in a wide range of possibilities where you can improve websites in many different ways. For instance, six months before I saw only a few Twitter Wordpress plugins available. Now, here is a lists of what you can get.  In order to give it my best I spend time experimenting and exploring with different things. It is just about time that I feel this website needs some improvement.

So, what will be in the new version?

The reason to have this change is mainly because I do not want my website to be “just another Wordpress blog”. The reason became even more understandable when I found that writing is not my strongest point. Not to mention finding the time to write. So there came the idea of separating the main site into two parts, in other words, it is going to be a Wordpress driven website with a blog in it. I am also working on a solution to creating a multi-language blog.

Apart from that, the design is what I want to remain similar. Especially when some part of my current blog has been known to some people. (Thanks to the design community for that!). You will still see a brand new look, but with a better sitemap. That is it!

Since I am starting my new job now. I try to do the redesign bits by bits. So, stay tuned!

I have to say I am really sick of IE hacks now and yet another problem in Opera has come to me which I have never expected.

[Update: it seems that after some slight change the problem has solved.]

So, I do think every web designer/developer would love to have their own domain name. This is the first day I launch my first ever domain! Woohoo. It actually took me a very long time to decide which name to use. Finally I decided to use my own name, I hope it isn’t too long for anyone to remember it. In fact, it is best for me to have quick access to it. As nowadays people do not tend to type in an address, anyway, if you really feel like it. Type in “athenaemily.com” and you are there. =)

Re-design.

As you can see, there is a slight change of look as well. I have already got some feedbacks saying that they prefer the old design =). Thanks for that, but we will try this style for now. If you are asking me “why?” I am changing it was because I felt that all the elements on the old version were completely not matching well together. Instead I want something that are integrating well. I would like to know what you think as well.

To be continue.

This maybe not my best work, but I was clear that I wanted to paint my emotion of “PSYCHE” on a canvas. Therefore I think this isn’t a matter of a “pretty” picture or not. There might well be some of you agreeing with my work after listening to “PSYCHE”. Before that I am going to put one of Zilch songs here, as an introduction to you. Here it is, also one of my favorite songs on their album, “EASY JESUS” (also a try on this new audio player =D, the player itself might need a little bit more time to load but the audio is very quick)

To be honest I am still getting the idea of Industrial music. I wonder how “industrial” “PSYCHE” is? Or can I not ask it this way. After all “PSYCHE” is a song written by hide and this made me think even more about it. So as the other songs on “3 2 1″. Somehow hide’s unique style makes it difficult to classify its genre. I would say for most songs they are “Alternative Rock”.

Seriously, “PSYCHE” is a song you will fall into in seconds. If you are afraid of trying new-”noisy” music like Industrial Rock. This is a good song to start with. I will put up the track soon, hopefully, with the release of the wallpaper. However if you are desperate to listen to it now there is a 30-second section of the song on its last.fm page (auto-start enable) which you can try. Personally, I do not recommend you to do so because the “beginning” of the song is the part that you will fall into and yet the track on last.fm is trimmed from the middle.

Just want to share my design process here. I had the idea of this new theme almost a month ago but it was not until 10 days ago I started to work on it. Doing bits and pieces every night.

1. The idea

The initial idea came up to me was to build up a site which has a/some specific topics. So there they are on the top. On my sketch I wrote a few “keywords” of my site-to-be. In fact it was pretty straight forward, I instantly jotted down “music, art, diaries, Apple” almost without thinking.

Secondly was the idea of images use in this site. I wanted to use images that are related to me/something I like/cannot live without.  And that’s what you see now on the top right corner (and at the very bottom).

2.  The style

Watercolour is one the many fine art media I love to use and have used it quite morderately. I thought I should bring it up on the screen. So as other hand-drawn features.

3. The making of…

Here are a series of screenshots I took while doing the layout. Initially I wanted to use a light wooden background but it didn’t really work well. So I changed to a darker background, still wooden though. The sidebar actually took me quite a long time as I had completely blank idea about it. I was going to draw some sketchy images to place on it but I HAVE NO SCANNER here. Yes…that’s the reason really.

4. Putting them together

Save the images, coding, find the plugins I needed. Yea, that’s basically it.

5. the Name – Honey so Sweet!

Despite that the colour theme has nothing to compare with Honey yellow. I am actually referring to L’arc~en~Ciel’s song “Honey”. OK…I still have no idea how they were related. They just do! I can only say this song inspired me along when creating this them.

Play “Honey”-L’arc~en~Ciel

Honey PV on Youtube

The album cover, as you see showing on the iPod touch.

かわいた風をからませ
あなたを連れてくのさ
honey　so　sweet　信じてほしい
この世界が嘘でも

Any question? Feel free to ask. =’) I would appreciate it!