Goodnewsgeorge 2.0

Welcome to my new site. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time tweaking it over the past week and I’m really happy with how it looks now.

It all started when I noticed that my website was taking longer to load than I would have liked, so I went on an optimizing spree. After that, I thought maybe it was the theme I was using that was the issue.

So, I spent a few minutes Googling high-speed themes and GeneratePress popped up – a theme I had tried in the past, but found it to be super barebones. I decided to give it another shot.

I began by experimenting with colors using palettes generated on Coolors.co. I opted for an orange banner at the top and was pleased with the result. It felt like a fresh coat of paint for my blog, a nice way to start the new year.

From there, I decided to use black text. We were off to a great start. Then, the design reminded me of Penguin Classic books. A quick lookup confirmed my suspicion. Inspired by this, I embraced the design influence.

Penguin orange? Check. Futura headers? Check. Caslon body text? Check. I used a deeper shade of yellow for more contrast and white for the background, as it’s odd having text on non-white backgrounds. Tada! A Penguin-inspired palette.

I also decided to remove ‘a blog by George Wong’ from the header. How many times does one person need to repeat their name? Since Hot Mulligan is still my favorite band of all time, I allowed myself to be inspired by their latest album, Why Would I Watch.

I played around with the layout, adjusted the sidebar and navigation bar, and settled on a layout I liked.

Lastly, I felt the site title needed a logo. It looked very empty without one. I tasked ChatGPT to turn a pen into a question mark, saved it, cleaned it up, made it transparent, and voilà! Icon done.

Welcome to goodnewsgeorge 2.0. Just ahead of respond.io’s redesign. Hah!

On a side note, reskinning my blog brought back the warm fuzzy feelings I used to have back in my teenage days, playing around with HTML and Paint Shop Pro, and thinking up new designs for my Geocities homepage. Maybe I should play around with websites more.

Graphic design is my passion.

Anyway, expect more real content next time. When was the last time you gave your homepage a facelift?