ntu_lj (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ntu_lj) wrote,@ 2009-03-02 17:35:00 |
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| Entry tags: | bloggish, two-column-right |
the mouse behind the wainscot
[comes out of hibernation]
So this is my response to the non-competitive layout challenge. Being me, I decided to make things maximally difficult by shoehorning in as many of the challenge terms as I could manage:
- Use an S2 Style other than Flexible Squares or Smooth Sailing
- This was a no-brainer, since I always use Bloggish. I fully intended to give Minimalism a test-run, but since I was working to a deadline it seemed easier to stick with what I know
- Create a liquid width layout.
- Well, it depends how you define 'liquid'. The individual elements are fixed-width, but if you're viewing in 1024x768 then the header should move to the top of the sidebar rather than floating to the left.
- Define font sizes in percentages or ems instead of pixels and points.
- I always do this anyway.
- Choose a colour scheme from ColourLovers or Kuler. (Post the colour scheme with your layout.)
- Didn't work with the direction I decided to go in, but I'm so going to do this when I make my grid-based pop-themed seasonal layout in Minimalism ;)
- Use a background image in an area other than the overall page background.
- Oh man. Did I ever.
- Manipulate the header so that it appears not as a header but as a sidebar.
- Done, for no particular reason other than to tick this off the list
- Have elements of your layout break outside the box.
- Well, if you have more than about a dozen tags they will spill out of the nice little sidebar tag (see what I did there?) designated for them. But not in any good way.
- Use the grid-based approach.
- Nope. Next time.
- Pick your favourite album of all time and create a visual equivalent for one of the songs on that album.
- To do this I would first have to decide on my favourite album of all time, which again was incompatible with deadlines
- Choose a decade, century, or historical era and integrate its visual cues.
- It's certainly historical. Where exactly in the past it is situated, I'm not quite sure. Victorian medieval?
- Represent one of the four seasons through colour and texture.
- It's a little bit autumnal, now I look at it, with the warm colours and the fallen petals, but that's accidental
- Use a favourite article of clothing as the basis for your layout. (Post a pic of the clothing, too!)
- Does Mariana's blue dress count? No? Even though there's a swatch of it in the userpic module? Oh well
- Pick a historical figure / fictional character (pre-1900) and create a layout that would have graced their LiveJournal had LJ existed.
- Yeah, this was the main one. Shakespeare's Mariana via Tennyson and Millais. Mariana would totally have had an LJ and filled it with emo whining about her ex.
- Use a quotation in a creative way by playing with the meaning of the words and how they relate to typography.
- I am not sure whether slapping a random line of poetry on the top of the scroll constitutes creativity. I suspect not.
Advance warning: I don't love this. It's very graphics-heavy, so unless you have a lightning-fast connection you may want to pass. More of a Zen Garden-style exercise than a usable template, really, but you can have it if you want it. Demo is on my test journal, for now. I've tested it with horizontal ads in Plus and it doesn't break, just looks icky.
To install: select Bloggish Unstyled, choose 2-column layout with right sidebar, then copy/paste the code into the custom CSS box, setting the 'Base Weblog' stylesheet option at the top to 'Yes'.
I'm offline until the 11th, so comments/queries/brickbats will be dealt with then.
