Let’s address the elephant in the room, shall we?

You might have noticed some things are a bit wonky around here: blurry images, a variety of image sizes within posts, duplicate images. The reason is that about three weeks ago I switched to new WordPress theme. If you’re not familiar with themes, they are a framework which your images and text fit into to make up a website.  Each theme requires customization in order to make everything work together harmoniously. But in this case, I very hastily decided to switch my theme and I haven’t taken the time to update the content to fit the framework yet.  So, for the time being, the issues are:

[liststyle icon=”icon-cancel-1″ color=”brandcolour”]

• Blurry portfolio images.  The original small images are being forced to fit a larger template and that stretches them out and makes them blurry.  I need to resize them, put each project into its proper category (webdesign, graphic design, etc) and, in some cases, add additional images to a gallery within each individual post.
• Blurry first image in blog posts; duplicate images.  Images on blog posts have been increased from 550 pixels to 750 which is great and one of the reasons I chose this template but that also means that, again, original images are stretched.  Also, each post now uses a “featured image” which I had not previously set. As a stop-gap measure, I installed a plugin which selects the first image in the post and autoomatically makes it the featured image. That’s great except now, within the post, the image is displayed twice, and the top one is big and blurry! ‘sigh’ I have 797 blog posts (!) so I can’t really see myself going back into each one and re-editing all the images but do I feel like something has to be done to help this issue.  It’s possible that I might just delete some of my archive since some of them are missing images anyway because of this previous issue (which is in itself a good example of what I’m talking about here). Regardless, it is a huge undertaking.

[/liststyle]

All in all, I feel like a really bad designer for allowing these issues to remain. The me of five years ago would have stayed up all night fixing the issues lest I face the embarrassment of such a public travesty. But considering that I’m not actively looking for design work, I suppose I don’t mind so much. In a way, perhaps it is a sign of maturity that I’m able to let this go for a while and just work on it at my own pace.

This new theme has a lot of great features which I’m looking forward to adding, including animated images which sweep in from the left or right of the screen and large header images at the top of pages which then “swoop down” into the content.  They’re really cool features but I just haven’t decided how to make them work for me yet.  The new theme also allows for gallery slideshows within blog posts and has some cool styling features for quotes and lists.

Some other upcoming improvements to the Dionne Design website:

[liststyle icon=”icon-cancel-1″ color=”brandcolour”]

• A new About page with a new portrait. The photo I have there is a selfie which I took a few years ago in my bathroom.  I still like it but I think I’d prefer to be smiling.  (Does anyone else feel awkward smiling in a selfie?) or perhaps in more of a context, working at home or something along those lines.  I’d also like to make my bio a little more personable.
• A new page which talks about the process by which I work.  I am not a coder but customize existing templates for each client so I want to make sure that clients understand that so that they can make an informed decision when they hire me.
• Along those lines, I also would like to put some firm package and pricing structures in place.  I have a vague idea of what I would like to do but I need to work through it a bit more before I publish it.
• And while I’m at it, I’d like to spruce up my web design and graphic design pages.

[/liststyle]

So there are many thought percolating and some changes on the horizon… stay tuned!

In addition to the design, I also did a mini logo redesign in January… and now I’ve done one all over again.  I liked the stylized D’s of the first logo but, in the end, I just appreciated the simplicity of the italicized words with some slashes next to them.  I also really wanted to add some color to the logo so I played around with some different things and ended up with what I thought of as sortof a punchy red but now I think I have to admit its hot pink. I never would have thought that hot pink would be my “thing” but it’s certainly a bold and positive color and that’s something I can appreciate.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who visits this site and blog.  I know it’s a mish-mash of ideas and photos and art etc, but I hope that each of you are able to find something to appreciate and enjoy.  A very sincere thank you for stopping by from time to visit me at this little outpost of the internets! :)