chapter 13: blueflower.org v10.0
(december 2004 to july 2005)

This is quite possibly the second-worst design for blueflower.org. Like version 7.0, this version was only intended as a stop-gap, but it lasted for far too long.

Version 10.0 debuted December 5, 2004. It's really not that much different from the previous version, except I got rid of all the blue. Instead of random images at the top, I changed instead to just one image - one taken inside Koreana in Appleton during the Tavern Tour in 2003. While I still like the photo, it didn't work for this design, and let me tell you why.

First of all, other than the gray background, most of the site was a very minimalist white. On the other hand, there was too much going on visually with the colors and whatnot in the photo, which made it distracting from the rest of the site. Instead of adding to the appearance as it should have, it only detracted.

And secondly, I used a burgundy color and a gold color from the photo for the links - not a bad idea in itself - but I picked the wrong colors (especially the gold), which made it look horrible, and I never bothered to fix it.

I moved the navigation menu from above the photo to below. I never got the alignment just right, so there was always a gray box on the far-right end of the menu which just looked stupid.

That gray background just never went well with the rest of the design. I don't know. I went with the gray so as not to be distracting, but it just did nothing for the design.

It took several months of work, but by the middle of July 2005, I was finally ready to do away with this layout forever and move onto something fresh and exciting.

The end... for now.