Design from an average day

Now I know I've done quite a lot to my blog since I first got it. It started off as a regular Minima template by Douglas Brown, provided by Blogger. Over the past (now nearly) two months, I've edited this to make it my own blog and, to be honest, I'm pleased with what I've done. I have never been taught about CSS and coding, but I've managed it myself, with perhaps one or two little internet tutorials helping along the way. Since I first started, I've created and put in my own banner, removed the Blogger button, removed the recent posts section, made a favicon, removed the Blogger Navbar, added more pages to my site - the contact me, about me and photo's page - edited the colour of my post titles, and generally I think, made the whole site better and I'm well chuffed with myself....but (and yes there's a but!) I still want to make it better. I don't know whether that's the designer in me, but I browse the web most days, and would regard myself as a compitent web user, and I go on all sorts of sites, blogs, design studios etc, and see inspiring designs that I'd LOVE to have on here.

I love so many different styles out there. I really like the grunge style, but I also really like a clean, simple and minimal style. I love vibrant colours, really bright, and I also like really calm, soothing designs. I love photography and good pictures, and I love the countryside and the city. The thing is, how do I show all that in one blog!? I saw the Fish n Chips site and it's got some code that randomly selects one out of around 4 skins they've designed. Now I really like that idea, it's cool. I could design a few sites that when someone logged on would randomly change, and each time they came back or refreshed, they'd see a new design. Not only would it be really cool, but it'd allow me to have all my different designs!

So far I'm thinking along these idea's for the skins:

- A minimal one like the current design. Simple, clean, fresh and with some sketch designs using my tablet.

- An underground, urban one, featuring pictures of the London underground I have, and maps of the underground. Could be either light or dark colours, I'm not sure yet. I saw this template, using the underground theme, and I liked some of the ideas.

- A grunge one. Something dark, dirty, maybe with a paper background which the text appears on - almost emo but not.

- A vibrant, colourful, interesting and abstract design, with really cool vector graphics

Now, that's all well and good but there are some problems - A) I have no idea how I'd design all of them, as I can't use Dreamweaver at all, and my CSS isn't good enough to make my own. B) I don't know the coding to randomly select a skin, and can't find on the Fish n Chips site how it does it.

A solution I've just thought of is that I could have thumbnails or bigger of samples of grunge/vibrant/minimal/urban etc and let the viewer choose which they want. Then, if they're inquisitive, they'll go back, and click on each one, and I'll get more page clicks! That could work, although a holding page for a blog doesn't quite sound right. The problem with having four options could be that I'd have to enter my blog entry four times into each section, although I'm sure there's a way you could just change the CSS but not the content. That's something to look up.

Wow, so much typed from such an average day! I guess it's just something I've been thinking about, and needed to write down so I could review it. I read through my last few entries today... I thought it made nice reading :)

Havn't done much today, as the title suggests. I've tried to work...the internet is just so distracting!

I've come back after tea to finish this, I had honey glazed chicken which was quite nice, a little too sweet for me. Also watched the end of Colateral Damage on C4 which looked good. Watched some of Match of the Day too and I've watched a few Joga Bonito videos. Amazing. What football should really be.

Anyway, seeya