Notes on the Redesign of GregToDiffer.com
Sunday, May 17, 2009 at 8:53PM 
Well, it took over a month but I finally have a custom design for my little blog here. Like it? To counter the fact that I have about as much experience with web design as Jenna Jameson does with romantic walks on the beach, I browsed through hundreds of examples on various design collections all over the web to get some inspiration and saw some really cool stuff. After I had a rough idea of what I wanted, I basically just opened Photoshop and drew a square. I wanted the square to have rounded edges, which took me approximately six days to learn how to do... I can put my head on the body of Abraham Lincoln in ten seconds, but rounded corners... oooohhhh. Anyway, it kind of evolved on its own from there.
The first thing you see is the cool little drawing that, I think, encapsulates Thailand pretty nicely (well, some parts were left un-drawn for the sake of the children and elderly). My extra-talented friend Tim Huesken, who once drew me a cartoon sex scene in High School on request, was nice enough to take a cocktail-napkin sketch I did and turn it into this... sweet.
From there, I slapped the design together and, after much searching, found the hyper-efficient Chris Parkinson, who took my Photoshopped jumble of pixels and returned them a few days later as a clean and easy to use Wordpress theme.
So... there's still a few tweaks to be made here and there and the 'writing' page is empty, but that'll change over the next little while.
Hope you like it, and hope to see you back here again.
This has actually happened to me, although the elephant didn't look so friendly... more like hungry.
Reader Comments (9)
I saw it yesterday but wanted to wait until you announced to give kudos.
I love it. The cartoon is the absolute best of any Thai blog out there and the style stands out.
Suggestions... could you please add a few WP plugins to make it easier for your readers?
Clean archives: so we can find past posts without going post by post
Similar posts: along with clean archives, it brings viewers further into your site
Subscribe to comments: so we don't have to keep coming back to see if you've replied to our comment
commentluv: because your readers are worth it ;-)
Anyway, well done!
The site is lookin' good! Looking forward to your next rocking rant! Jay
Greg - the site looks great - good work.
Coolio. Unique look, and fits your personality to a tea.
Hi there,
good work my friend. Good content and good design.
I wish I could have a design that matched my content that well... Or vice versa...
Cheers
The pictures take me back to the FCHS cafeteria! It looks great! Very... homey. In a "feels nice to be here" sort of way, not a gansta friend type. In short, it's super sweet! Love reading it.
greg, the site looks fantastic, and the cartoon header is awesome! nice work. :-)
Thanks everyone, glad you like it. Still some tweaking to be done, but I think it's pretty close to finished.
Welcome back Greg. Knew it was a Tim original as soon as I saw it. This feel is more you. Read you later.