Well, its been a long time coming, but I finally took the time to start setting up my new business' website: http://koladesigns.com. 1 If you visit the page, there clearly isn't much to look at; yet. The site is being developed in Drupal 6 and I have an idea for how I want to implement the look and feel (theming). As anybody that has worked with Drupal can tell you, there is most definitely more than one way to skin this cat (pun intended). During this design process, it is my intention to blog about what I am working on so that I can keep a record of the solutions to any hurdles that I find along the way.
Day 1: The theme background image
To kick things off, I needed a potential color scheme to work with. For this project, I really wanted to base everything around the notion that I am powered by cola. Even though soda does not really come in glass bottles anymore, I decided to use a bottlecap as inspiration for my logo. Since this felt a little dated, I decided that maybe my site should go for a more retro look as well. This eventually lead me down the road to using Google Image search to look up images of 50's and 60's artwork that portrayed soda's glory years: the soda shoppe. Once I locked onto a set of colors that I liked, came the next phase: how do I make a web site look like a soda shoppe? The answer is, I don't know! However, I will take it a step at a time to try and implement it all the while trying to balance the limitations of CSS and Drupal Theming.
Since I live in Idaho, I thought I would try to put something in my theme that represents Idaho alongside the soda shoppe idea. Problem is, people only recognize Idaho based on three symbols (regardless of what's on the State quarter): the potato, mountains, and now Larry Craig's bathroom stall. Deciding that a potatoes and bathroom stalls would be too hard to fit into my design, I went with using mountains. Using gradients and mountain silhouettes2, I have included a sample of the image that I will be using for the body's background with this post.
Next issue to tackle: Two or Three column layout, a fixed width or liquid layout, and should I base this on the Blueprint theme or Zen theme. More details to follow …
- The name Kola Designs comes from the fact that I live on mass quantities of Diet Coke. As the hours tick away into the wee hours of the night, I tend to over-caffeinate myself to get the work done.
- Special thanks to JavierXhX at Deviant Art for creating a set of vector images that can be used as Photoshop Brushes. Retrieved on 7-26-08 from http://javierzhx.deviantart.com/art/Vector-Mountains-34496591