So here it is…the new design that I’ve been working on for the past week since I lost my job to the economy.

If you look at my description on the portfolio page featured post, I said that I was trying to focus less on very prominent textures. This was a problem that I was always running into when I first started doing WordPress themes for myself. In fact, the design I scrapped for this one was a complete mess in that regard. Very contrasty, grainy texture that I grew sick of just from looking at it for more than five minutes at a time. I decided to just scrap it, because I know that if I think it’s too textured then so would everyone else.

This is the first design that I completely shut out Internet Explorer 6 from. Since it is my personal site, I figured why not. I hate the browser itself (all Internet Explorer versions actually). I created a backup site for all IE6 users though…so they can at least download a minified version of my portfolio + resume, but if they are design studios still using IE6 as a standard developing browser..then I really don’t want anything to do with them. If they are clients on the other hand, that’s fine. I’ll still support IE6 for client work.

The Brads – Browser Support

Some cool things to point out in this design:

1. I added a cool contact menu/drop down that contains a link to download my resume, my various forms of contact (email, twitter, facebook) and a contact form. This was something I always wanted to do, but never got around to it due to the business of working. It’s running on an adapted script I found called slidebox and it runs off jQuery.

2. I created a homepage slideshow with a bit more personality than something I would normally do. I see creative slideshows like this on cool sites like those featured on Smashing Magazine, Web Design Ledger, Web Designer Depot etc…and always wanted to do one myself. I hope it will give me an advantage when web design studios come to my site looking for more information.

3. I incorporated my twitter feed into the footer of my site. Again, something I’ve always wanted to do. I really like sites that do something with their social networking feeds. It gives you a small view into their personalities.

There are other various bits and pieces thrown in here as well that I won’t go into, but overall, I am very happy with the way this site came out. I want to thank my fiancee, Kat Hall, who is a web/print designer, for giving me feedback on my various layouts and page templates.