Saturday, October 16, 2010

New look for Images of Centretown

I've wanted to customize the layout for Images of Centretown ever since Blogger introduced the Template Designer in March, and moreso since discovering Kate (and Mike)'s blog, The Incidental Cyclist, which used the same template as Images of Centretown (same initials, too!)

Here's the old IoC layout:

Compared with the IC layout:

The new layout is cleaner, and combined with the customizability of the template designer, makes it easier to distinguish between individual posts. I've retained the light brown colour for the titles as a reference to the old layout and to try to warm it up a bit. I've also refreshed some elements, like the "Recent Posts" module which was using an old version, and added social networking links in the event people like that stuff (thankfuly they're greyed out so as not to stand out). Unfortunately, I can't put a background behind the left sidebar, so some of the text might be a bit difficult to read.


The backdrop is a sepia-filtered scan of a 1961 aerial photo of Centretown and downtown from the Midcentury Modernist's collection. I haven't yet done so with this particular aerial, but the Mid Mod has used crops of the photo for some of his posts, like this one and this one.

If you have any problems with the template, or just want to say how much you enjoy it, why not leave a comment?

3 comments:

  1. ...and I forgot to include the Google Analytics tracking code. Oops.

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  2. Hi,
    I love the old town image, but it does indeed make it harder to read on the left and is somewhat distracting. Is there any other way to use the image other than a direct backdrop?

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  3. Hi Cynthia,

    I've darkened the background image, which should hopefully make the text on the left easier to read.

    Cheers

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