I started the initial work on a new website for our Sunday school class at church. As I typically do, I started by browsing layouts from Open Source Web Design. The OSWD site is currently down, but in the meantime I have a repository of layouts on my local machine that I’ve considered for other projects in the past.
I looked through the layouts myself and then I also showed them to Joy, and that’s where I ran into a problem. When I choose a design, I always select something clean, simple to navigate, and easy to maintain in the long run. When Joy chooses a design, she picks something more artistic, creative, and “fun”. So there’s the classic tradeoff. Joy thinks the designs that I would choose are “boring”, and I think the designs she would choose are “confusing” and difficult to maintain over time. So I’m not entirely sure where we’ll end up with this. Probably somewhere in the middle, but if I can convince her, I’d like to start with something I consider maintainable and then add elements to make it look more creative instead of going the other way around.
I’m personally a huge fan of the OSWD layouts by haran. I use one for the Guilford Family home page and a different one for my personal pages. I’d like to use a variation of Gila for the Sunday School page, but I’ve got quite a bit of convincing to do before I can do that without objection from Joy.
Brad… no offense. You ARE boring. I like your blog because I’m a huge fan of “Green”, but Joy does have those things going for her… STYLE AND FLAIR! She makes her stuff fun! Give her some creative rights but just make the font easy to read and you’ll be fine. ;)
Comment by Carrie — October 31, 2005 @ 11:54 pm
Thank you Carrie!
Dear Husband of mine the layouts that you showed me are plain! We are a young Sunday school class and we are having fun! We are not a class in their 80’s! We have spice and life! I am sure that some of the 80 year olds have spice and life as well but we are young and bold! We need a fun and happening layout not boring blah! We need at least a little artistic touch to the site (I will volunteer my artistic touch :)). We will work on this together dear! :)
I do love your website though because it is you, but my site is fun and happening not quite so reserved. Come on break out a little…just a little…please!
Comment by Joy — November 1, 2005 @ 6:23 pm