website redesign

The few regular readers out there might have noticed a change to my website design last week or so. Changes are still in progress as I am working to get the page and type design the way I want it to. A summary of what I am trying to do:

• change from a dark color scheme to a neutral color scheme to make things easier to read and to make it easier to discern color in the photographs
• changing the typeface of the blog post from the sans-serif Trebuchet font to the serif Georgia font and increasing the type size to make it easier to read, particularly the occasional Chinese characters I put in the posts
• widening the body of the posts to balance it out with the larger type size
• moving the right-hand sidebar out of the way to allow for page-width size content like side-by-side comparisons of photos or posting of more detailed sketches and diagrams (in progress)
• providing for a index of all my posts so I (and readers) can find things I've written about in the past (in progress)
• making room for more permanent content I want to provide, like articles, how-tos, and eventually book chapters (in progress)

I'm trying to go for a simpler, cleaner design, while making the information on the page a little more dense. I'm treating it as an exercise in information design, while following the tenets of software engineering: incremental improvement, always having a working system. The author is appreciative of readers' patience during this design upgrade and welcomes feedback on the new design as it develops :)