Finding My New Look
I’ve been trying to figure out what kind of image I want to use as the header for this blog. While the emphasis should be on content over visuals, the fact is no one’s going to read or buy anything if it looks like crap, no matter how good it might otherwise be.
Of course, as with any website, the focus of the blog itself is what normally should help define the style and look for the site, if not the writer behind the blog. Knowing how I want to approach this blog – as a basic catch-all for my thoughts and comments on a wide range of topics – it made for some challenges on where to start. At first, I thought about taking some neutral visual background and overlaying it with various images from topics I’d most likely bring up or discuss in this blog. But looking at the blog design I used here, I figured a cleaner, simplistic approach would make more sense. Besides, the internet is filling up with lots of sites offering a cornucopia of visual treats, and in some cases it’s the equivalent of a visual overload, making it more confusing to know where exactly the focus of the reader should be.
So using the blog’s colour scheme as the basis for the design, I took this photograph I shot of my hometown several years ago, cropped and resized it to banner image size before going at it in Photoshop to create the image seen gracing the top of this entry (by the way, this image was a delayed exposure shot taken of the city lights at night. Ah, the fun that can be had with Photoshop). While it certainly fits into the overall aesthetic of this blog, what I’m finding I like best about it is the visual impression of the original photograph that still comes across in this modified version.
As you can see, there’s a path going from the foreground to the center of the image, disappearing into a part of the city. Depending on how you come into viewing this image, it can seem like this is a path that is leading you toward the city and whatever discoveries lie therein. Or perhaps, it’s a view looking back as you move forward down this path, moving away from what is familiar to something new. Like with a painting on the wall, there’s no wrong or right way to view. Instead, there’s only what you the viewer bring to the piece and what the piece leaves in you when you move on.
In any case, the symbolism of this image seems to fit rather well with this blog. And so, I think we may have a winner.
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