I've been really wanting to change things up with the website for a while, and get my page "out of the box" - literally and figuratively, but kept drawing a blank when it came to designs.  Occasionally I'd see a really sleek artist website, and want to do a re-design mine, but ultimately I'd end up in the same place - dead in the water.

Then, my boss, Marcus, sent me a link to a website describing a way of designing sites using a grid system, and on that page was a thumbnail to a site that inspired me to actually do something.  It was simple, elegant, it was professional, it was sleek and it was all in black. 

I've never really liked websites all in black, and I wasn't sure I wanted to go that route myself, but I loved the way that their site just sort of had everything appearing to hang in mid-air. I even tried doing something that was all white, but along the same lines of "content just kind of hanging in empty space," but I kept coming back to the fact that I mat in black, [[[[[[[[iframe]]]]]]]] in black, and for some reason, my work looks best on black.  Besides, my boss rightly pointed out that the all white was just too austere, and just wasn't working.

So I tinkered with it, and ended up coming back to the all black.  And for some reason, this time it worked - especially how the images and colors really popped off the screen, visually.  I loved it.  Boss loved it.  Showed it Alvin and he loved it, and thought we could make it work. I was going to code it myself, but hubby's getting ready to use the Yahoo! Grid System for a project at work, so he asked if he could design the basic frame work.  And by golly, he made it work exactly how I envisioned - right down to the navigation that follows you down the page, so it's always ready to take you where you want to go. 

There were a few bugs, which I'm proud to say I helped fix, and then I also migrated most of the content into the new design (and made it work).  We really did get it to look almost identical to the original mock-up in Fireworks.  Actually, even better.  Still a couple little things I'd like to get nailed down, but it's up, and it works.

My favorite part is the new logo.  For ever I've been picking a font, making a logo, and then being dismayed when I saw everyone and their brother using that font for everything soon after.  This time, I've got that licked.  I used the signature I use on my artwork.  No font for that! LOL  It's simple, and it's unique to me and my "brand."

Without further ado, here is the new site design (or just visit the site, here):