Aug 31 2002
Glorious Visions
Wouldn’t you know it? I forgot to bring along my camera on the one day the sky decided to to something incredible. Massive clouds sailed along high above me, backlit by the early morning sun. Here and there, shimmery beams of light pierced through gaps in the cloud cover. I could easily have pictured an angel or two sitting on those clouds strumming on lyres and singing joyful songs. It was that glorious. The vision is better in my mind than it could have been on a pixelated screen anyway. 
I stayed up far too late last night, but don’t feel all that tired. I’m excited about a design project I started for Becky. She asked me to help her out with a template for Movable Type and requested that I use a particular photo from Image Cafe. At first, I was stumped about what I would do with the image, since it’s in an entirely different color range than I’m used to working with. I played around a bit and inspiration hit. I’m in love with this design! The colors are so bright and cheerful, they make me happy just looking at them. I think it’s high time I started working on a fun skin for this site But first, I must finish tweaking Becky’s templates.
Designing is a lot like romance. At first, you’re giddy with delight over what you’ve created, but as time progresses, and you start the harder work of making the design functional, you subside into a much quieter frame of mind. The first blush of the romance has faded. The butterflies in your stomach have settled down. You’re still committed, but familiarity has taken away the glamour somewhat.
I have more fun designing for other people than I do for myself. The pressure to create something that suits me perfectly is absent. I get to witness the pleasure my gift has given my friend. That makes me feel good through and through!
My design habits have changed a lot during the past few months. As I work more and more with CSS to position elements on the page and define various attributes, I’ve been doing the bulk of the work in Notepad. I used to have Dreamweaver open more often than Outlook! One thing I can say: my code is much, much cleaner than it used to be!
Speaking of designing, I have neglected Quixotic Pixels lately. I meant to add several new sets during the summer so I would have a decent collection of them by September when Pixelitas would resume accepting applications. I’ve always wanted to apply, because I feel I could learn a lot from this talented group of designers, but I’ve been too nervous to do so before. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be anywhere near ready when the time comes. *sigh* Maybe another day…
