Registration marks
So I think (with the emphasis on “think,” even though it hurt) that I've decided on the look for the new iteration of PlanetMut.
Now I’m sure some of you are looking at the site going “Jesus wept, what is this shit?” as you don a pair of sunglasses to cut down on the glare from the white background and bright colours. And they are bright, aren’t they?
I originally really had no idea what look I wanted for the site. I’ve still got the old PlanetMut header and button images and gave them a look over when I was creating the new version, but I decided I wanted to do something new.
And I was a bit sick of red, which is obviously why I stuck a photo of a red brick wall at the top of the site when I launched it. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with the photo of the wall — if anyone’s interested it’s the side wall of a shop near my mum’s house — but on the other hand, meh. So, back to the drawing board.
I thought about doing another planet header then found the one above and thought, “nah.” Literal images didn’t take my fancy, so I was stuck with the wall until I could think of something. Anything.
After I got my bipolar tattoo a couple of years ago, I started to think about getting another one. Cadbury’s pawprint is an obvious choice but I also thought about getting CMYK registration blocks until I realised yellow wouldn’t show up too well on my pasty Welsh skin.
But the CMYK idea stayed with me, which is not surprising as I design newspapers for a living, and I like 1980s colours (although I draw the line at teal) so I started to wonder if there was anything I could do with basic cyan, magenta, yellow and black.
My first attempt was to basically do literal CMYK marks, the sort you used to see on the bottom of newspaper pages (although I’ve never seen these cool-looking hearts used before). I ended up with this:
The words you’re thinking of are “CHRIST NO!” I mucked about with the placement, moving the yellow up a bit and the black down to give that “out of registration” look us designers just love seeing on our pages the following day and which means the readers will need a pair of 3D glasses to see the pictures properly.
Then I thought about doing something that would lose the horrible blocks of colour but keep the newspaper theme — halftone. Halftone is (in simple terms) the dots that make up printed images in newspapers and magazines, and I failed miserably to do a decent header image using it, so back to the drawing board again.
But I liked the idea of CMYK and dots so I searched for halftone Photoshop brushes and found these on Brusheezy:
I tried the basic dots first but didn’t like the effect, so then I tried the arrows and they worked. After resizing the brush and mucking about, I ended up with this:
Result! Blindingly colourful but I love it. Then it was time to find a font. As I was on a roll, I searched for halftone fonts and found Lumenharmaa on the ever-reliable dafont.com.
Then it was just a case of sorting out which bits of the site were going to be which colour and that’s where I hit another problem. Yellow — or as I came to think of it, #fff200 — doesn’t show up too well on a white background. So I had to darken it a bit to a shade I came to know and love as #c7be45 and used it for the visited link colour.
The post headings were originally in magenta (#ec008c) but they were too bright even for me, so I put them back to black. The cyan bits (#00aeef) were easy enough. All I need to do now is work out how to move the post container to the left a bit to centre it under the heading and I’m laughing.
Of course, I have no doubt I’ll be redesigning the site in six months or so and will probably go through the same fun and games again then.
 |
| The red wall, v1. Note the font that says “I have no idea what to do, that looks OK, I'll go with it.” |
Now I’m sure some of you are looking at the site going “Jesus wept, what is this shit?” as you don a pair of sunglasses to cut down on the glare from the white background and bright colours. And they are bright, aren’t they?
 |
| Same wall with the font from The Cure’s Wish album. |
 |
| Oh look! Red! I think this was the third version of the site. |
 |
| Add some stars, change the font and voila! — a “redesign” is born. |
And I was a bit sick of red, which is obviously why I stuck a photo of a red brick wall at the top of the site when I launched it. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with the photo of the wall — if anyone’s interested it’s the side wall of a shop near my mum’s house — but on the other hand, meh. So, back to the drawing board.
 |
| I’m not sure which version this was. Maybe 2012ish? |
I thought about doing another planet header then found the one above and thought, “nah.” Literal images didn’t take my fancy, so I was stuck with the wall until I could think of something. Anything.
 |
| I cannot remember if I ever used this. I know there was an orange version that was used but it’s gone. |
 |
| The filename for this image is “header_green”. There is no green version. |
After I got my bipolar tattoo a couple of years ago, I started to think about getting another one. Cadbury’s pawprint is an obvious choice but I also thought about getting CMYK registration blocks until I realised yellow wouldn’t show up too well on my pasty Welsh skin.
 |
| Us designers have a technical term for this: Utter desperation. This one never got used, for obvious reasons. |
But the CMYK idea stayed with me, which is not surprising as I design newspapers for a living, and I like 1980s colours (although I draw the line at teal) so I started to wonder if there was anything I could do with basic cyan, magenta, yellow and black.
 |
| The header used on the last version of the original site, done using a 1970s palette. |
My first attempt was to basically do literal CMYK marks, the sort you used to see on the bottom of newspaper pages (although I’ve never seen these cool-looking hearts used before). I ended up with this:
The words you’re thinking of are “CHRIST NO!” I mucked about with the placement, moving the yellow up a bit and the black down to give that “out of registration” look us designers just love seeing on our pages the following day and which means the readers will need a pair of 3D glasses to see the pictures properly.
Then I thought about doing something that would lose the horrible blocks of colour but keep the newspaper theme — halftone. Halftone is (in simple terms) the dots that make up printed images in newspapers and magazines, and I failed miserably to do a decent header image using it, so back to the drawing board again.
But I liked the idea of CMYK and dots so I searched for halftone Photoshop brushes and found these on Brusheezy:
I tried the basic dots first but didn’t like the effect, so then I tried the arrows and they worked. After resizing the brush and mucking about, I ended up with this:
Result! Blindingly colourful but I love it. Then it was time to find a font. As I was on a roll, I searched for halftone fonts and found Lumenharmaa on the ever-reliable dafont.com.
Then it was just a case of sorting out which bits of the site were going to be which colour and that’s where I hit another problem. Yellow — or as I came to think of it, #fff200 — doesn’t show up too well on a white background. So I had to darken it a bit to a shade I came to know and love as #c7be45 and used it for the visited link colour.
The post headings were originally in magenta (#ec008c) but they were too bright even for me, so I put them back to black. The cyan bits (#00aeef) were easy enough. All I need to do now is work out how to move the post container to the left a bit to centre it under the heading and I’m laughing.
Of course, I have no doubt I’ll be redesigning the site in six months or so and will probably go through the same fun and games again then.
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