Markup is Beautiful: The Darowski.com Redesign

• 4 Comments
• Posted: February 16th, 2009
• Filed Under: CSS, Darowski Dot Com, Design, Markup

Things look a little different around here today.

In December, when I launched the Tabigail theme, I wrote:

Since [March 2007], I’ve tweaked and refined [this site] endlessly, but still kept the basic feel of that design I did in a day over twenty months ago. While I really like the design, it’s time for a change. So, what better way to archive the design than releasing it as a WordPress theme?

So, I had publicly tasked myself with a redesign. Today, I’m launching it. I dig it. So, what do I want to talk about?

1. Markup is beautiful: I love markup. Like, a lot. I love it so much that I wanted to work it into the redesign. It serves many purposes. Markup is beautiful, so I think it looks good. Also, there’s a new portfolio that takes the markup-as-design-element to a new level. Not only does exposing markup on my portfolio show what’s important to me and shows I know what I’m talking about, it also weeds out prospective clients that just don’t “get it”.
2. Finally, a portfolio: I’ve been told that I’m a rare designer that doesn’t have a portfolio. Now I do. I’ve only got the most recent/current projects on there right now (as you can tell by the class of the <dl>!), but I do love the design.
3. Ignores IE6. Well, and IE7, too: Would you believe that IE7 still doesn’t support the :before and :after pseudo-elements? The markup in the design relies heavily on this (look carefully, it’s not in the source). The design degrades well in IE, of course. They just don’t get the markup at all.
4. A sidebar!: The Tabigail theme had no sidebar. What I love about the sidebar in the new design is that it essentially contains a Microformats tutorial.
5. Non-web fonts: I’m into Georgia. It’s very pretty, for a web font. But I wanted to reward the folks that may have nicer fonts installed. If you’ve got Garamond, you’ll get Garamond. If you’ve got Baskerville, you’ll get Baskerville. If you’ve got nothing, you still get Georgia.
6. Gray: Yeah. I can’t help it. At least I used red for the first time!

Please let me know what you think. I’m sure it’ll keep getting tweaked. So, this is far from final. It’s just a first release.