When I started conceptualizing how I wanted my next redesign to look like (back in March before FOWD), I described the new theme as “dark, clean, vector style, tropical, colorful look if that makes any sense.” Well, after doing a little more brainstorming, sketching and inspiration seeking, I finally crafted out what I envisioned the layout to be from the vague ideas floating around my head.

Here’s the initial grey scale design I comped up:

The idea was to prominently display the latest freelance work I’ve been involved in and potentially serve as a means of new clientele prospects to see my latest work. This design would also sport my blog, but remove it from the primary spotlight. Instead, let my work be displayed first, then read my commentary on web design, development and WordPress.

But since I frequently have a change of thought, I developed the theme in a way to widgetize everything so if I that ever would happen, I wouldn’t have to do some drastic back-end changes. Drag and drop is everybody’s friend.

All good and well so I continued playing around with this layout concept and threw in some color:

The color palette was primarily influenced by Rastafarian colors.

When designing any kind of mockup, I try not to add substantial text due to the major differences in the way Photoshop renders text compared to a web browser. My work flow would then involve me coding up a quick and dirty xHTML/CSS layout to test the typography and seeing if there are any layout quirks I need to address before things become final.

You know it’s funny, I subconsciously changed the comp’s design tone from light to dark after spending late nights tweaking the layout’s code to get a better idea on the typography. My eyes started squinting trying to read black text on a white background (22″ monitor), it was too bright! Besides that minor adjustment, everything seemed ready to get converted into code. The layout relied heavily on transparency to give it a more vivid look and feel. I knew this was going to be a tad bit challenging for legacy browsers, but I persisted.

FOWD was around the corner and I was still working on browser quirks. I wanted the redesign to go live before I headed off to London but I was being a little to optimistic with that goal. So I striped the layout to it’s bare minimum with only the blog section going live with plans to continuously add new sections one by one after I get back from the trip. Of course, that didn’t happen. While I was in London, the design already grew old.

I wish I would of stuck with the concept, it really did look good in photoshop. Alas, I rushed it and the design went with it too. That’s why in this iteration of the redesign (codename: Atlanta City Theme), I wanted to start with building the actaul content, then all determine the style as I go along.