What did the 0 say to the 8? Nice Belt

Never let reality get in the way of a perfectly good theory.

- Bill Jetzer

Cards

So I got serious on developing my pet project (for the third time…)! I don’t want to go into too much specifics of the idea itself, as I might inadvertently pass along this awesome (well at least I think it is!) idea to others who perhaps could be better at executing it. The gist of it is an online resource called Mad’s To Do.

Now I fancy myself as a decent designer, but I never like what I come up with. Seriously, I’m on my third design! The first was a ridiculous attempt with a dark apple-inspired textured background with a white content wrapper of three listful columns. It really had no direction as you can see…

First Mads To Do

Before I get torn to bits on that, I have to say that it was not pre-thought out and was built within 3 months of learning how to start building websites. It was useful in that I got something written, but in no way was it something I was going to product. That logo by-the-way was the second incarnation of a Mad’s To Do logo. The first being too embarrassing to show.

Inspired by some flattish design trends, I came up with my second design below. I feel like it was an excellent start in the header direction but I still hadn’t cracked how to present the content. I mean, really, who uses sidebars anymore?

Mads To Do Second Design

Then I got inspired! Cards! A few months ago I read a design article on how Twitter and other sites had been moving towards cards. It didn’t really hit me though until I went to Starbucks and saw their wi-fi welcome page that I knew that this is what I wanted. Ultimately, this is skewing towards skeuomorphism in the sense that I would be trying to imitate an object based in reality that brings to mind familiarity in presenting information, but oh well… It is perfect for Mad’s.

The execution is a different story and is still in progress. Do I use a pale solid background, blurred colorful photo, etc…? Do I make it responsive? Of course, to some extent yes, but to what degree… which is proving a difficult thought. What colors do I use? What are these cards going to look like? A lot of questions I have yet to answer.

Other than that, not much else is going on… I’m learning my lines :)