The design that I ended up with does not even resemble the original theme I had in mind. I had started with an abstract purple background and an image of flowers. After implementing the image, I immediately decided that flowers are overused and overrated (and I wanted to veer as far as possible from the original style sheet).
After browsing endlessly through Stock Exchange, I had acquired a handful of possible images which were anxiously awaiting in “my favorites” page (awesome feature- this is why Stock Exchange is great, aside from the oodles of royalty free high resolution images). I eventually chose a black and white photograph of a pair of aged male hands holding a cigarette. I am not, and have never been, a smoker. But there was something striking about this image.
At first I had it positioned the photo in the upper left hand corner (as Zen and the Art of CSS recommends). It looked fine in this spot, but the rest of the page was lacking. I decided I would try to incorporate some type of smoke into the background. The background image that I chose ended up becoming the main element of the page. After much frustration with the cigarette photo, I decided to completely nix it altogether. The smoke image was prevalent enough and I did not want to overwhelm the page with images.
I used Adobe Photoshop® to create the header. I remembered one of the chapters in the Zen book stressing the fact that it does not matter how lovely the typography is if it was manipulated through CSS because not all browsers support every CSS font. Since the font I chose is very curly, I decided it would be best to keep the rest of the text clean and simple.
I also used the same background image in Adobe Photoshop® to create the small cloud of smoke at the top of this report page. I chose the same font style for the heading as well in order to remain consistent with the original design.
After placing the body of the text in every possible position on the page, I finally decided to position it within the stream of smoke. I realize it is not always the best idea to center large bodies of text; however, in this case it was the most aesthetically pleasing option (it looked awful when I tried justifying it to both the left and the right).
The element of the page that I am most pleased with is my linkage. It took me forever to figure out how to get to do exactly what I had envisioned, but when it finally turned out it was well worth the frustration.
Overall, I am satisfied with the work I have accomplished thus far in CSS. In the beginning I was terrified of the blank style sheet. I now realize that it is simply a matter of time and experimentation that will lead me to creating more skillful designs in the future.
Stacy Warden
Grand Valley State University
wardenst@student.gvsu.edu
October 2006