I've always had great respect for good web designers. They need to know enough about how websites work as well as having an eye for making things look good. From my own perspective I know how websites work, from HTTP requests to how HTML and CSS get rendered, but when it comes to design, quite simply: I suck. (Which explains why this blog is running a stock-standard BlogEngine.NET theme)

But last week I got my shiny new highly-spec'd Alienware laptop that finally allows me to run Photoshop and Chrome at the same time!

I was just tinkering around with a few Photoshop tutorials and decided to have a quick stab at re-designing my websites (this blog and my home page, sort of bringing them together).

This is what I came up with. I'm not necessarily in any sort of dark and ominous mood, but for some reason dealing with dark shades seems a lot easier than dealing with colours. I think using Visual Studio 2011 with its dark theme and the whole Windows 8 "metro" look has taken me this way.

File resource missing

It's not going to make the cut into my new website, well not as it is, but it's a start.