The redesign of this website had been something I wanted to do for the past year, and after numerous unsuccessful attempts I finally decided on the version you see before you today.

The old design which you can see a jpeg of here, hadn’t seen any significant changes to the design in the 2 years that it had been live, and although it served it’s purpose reasonably well in that time - I felt it was time for a change.

I decided fairly on in the redesign that I would move away from the ‘boxy‘ look of the old site opting instead for a more open layout and designing it for 1024×768 screens rather than 800×600.

I experimented with various colour schemes but still found myself drawn towards the bright greens of the previous design.

I also found myself using a leaf motif in the header of the site which is a continuation from the header and background of the previous version. I also included a photograph to add some visual interest to the design - that was something I felt the old site lacked.

Here are some of the alternative designs including a very early version which featured a giant toy robot (seemed like a good idea at the time). I quite liked the versions with darker backgrounds and light text but was concerned about the readability.

Content wise I felt it was time for a complete rewrite, the home page now acts more as an introduction to the other pages of the site which have been expanded. The WordPress powered blog section is a completely new addition to the site and in hindsight probably took the most time to get working and looking how I wanted.

Like most of the work I produce I’m not 100% happy with the end result, there are still quite a few things to tweak and improve - the coding could be cleaner and I will probably improve some of the content, including the portfolio section where I am considering adding some information about each project.

If anyone spots any bugs or has any comments about the design it would be good to hear them.