This is part 3 in a series of post, going through the process of building Ptah Dunbar dot Com. If you haven’t read part1 and part2, I’d suggest you go check that out so you can read about the goal and background of this project.

Mock Up - (30mins)

The images below were the initial concepts of how I wanted the website to look. The first image is the front page showcasing my featured work, and a brief list of articles written on the blog. Below where you see the floating box at the bottom is the footer. I wanted to have my picture posted there on the lower left corner along with a short bio and what the site is all about. Next to that, are two fields where I thought about placing the categories and a tag cloud.

excuse the quality, took it with a flashless iPhone.

If you click on one of the article links on the homepage, you would land on the single page (image to the right).
I sketched up a two column typical blog setup. I didn’t want to try to reinvent the wheel here because this layout just works. It also makes sense in terms of usability so that you (readers) don’t have to get used to a different reading scheme.

After letting the mock up sit in my moleskin for a few days, I didn’t like the homepage anymore. I wanted something a little different. So I tried again.

This image might be a little hard to understand, but it’s pretty simple. I designed the top half of the homepage, kinda liked it, so I designed it again right under it. You can see the darker outlining from the middle going down to the bottom.

I like this one and it past the test of time so I stuck with it. So the upper half is the featured spot where I’ll have my latest work looking sexy by itself. For the second half of the page, I wanted to keep the two columns, but instead of just having articles filling the whole 865px space, I wanted to reserve that for “potential clients” needing that extra push to fill out a quote, click on “services,” or contact me. The articles now reside on the right which seemed to fit. So far, looking good.

In the next post for this series in creating Ptah Dunbar dot Com, I’ll go through the design phase, and take a look in converting this design to wordpress.