Dayna.me » Web designs

A Brand New Start for 2012

Dayna — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:56:45 +0000

This is going to be my first post in 7 months so please pardon me if I’m shooting randomly. I’m pretty sure no one’s going to be reading this but just for my own references in the future: As some might know, the past year had been a very difficult year for me and I just wanted to thank all the angels in my life who has see me through these times. I really appreciate how you guys are here for me, picking up my calls at 2am and simply just listening to me. Without your support, I might still be on Titanic sinking… fast.

That aside, I am getting back on my feet and getting my blog back on track! This layout has been hovering around for the past 3 – 4 months and I have finally managed to sit down and work on it. Minimalistic – not my usual style but it really hits close to home. Life is as simple it can gets – friends, family, food, tea & just simply enjoying myself, what’s more in life to ask for?

While I was away, so much has happened AKA lots of upgrades were required both to WordPress and plugins. I am still fiddling with what’s new on the latest version though I highly doubt I will be needing any of the new features (if any). Meanwhile, I got most of the bugs floating around fixed. I did not carry out cross browsers testing so shoot if you noticed anything quirky!

There are so many things I wanted to blog about, to remember in the future and this will be the first. 2011 was the most valuable lesson in my life thus far and I can now tell the world, I’m a better and happier person and most importantly, I am myself.

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New layout: Back to Basic – Sakura

Dayna — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 16:03:39 +0000

As promised, a new layout after my exams! I would consider this layout as one of the simplest I have made over the past 2 years. This design strays away from my usual cute and colourful style. There are no kawaii cartoon (or panda for that matter) characters nor bright rainbow colours. I find this change very refreshing but I’m not sure if others feel that way too. It made use of just pastel colours and the entire design revolves around the Sakura flower.

This layout is inspired by both the art and soundtrack of the animé Hakuouki: Shinsengumi Kitan. I am totally in love with this animé especially the art – beautiful cherry blossoms featured in many scenes and not to mention learning a bit more about the history of Japan. I have been listening to the soundtrack for a few days before coming up with this design. In conclusion, love or hate?

Scan credit to animepaper.net

Hakuouki: Shinsengumi Kitan - Toshizo Hijikata

Click here to view the embedded video.

Fishing for designs kills all the creativity

Dayna — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 05:32:42 +0000

When will some people ever realise that not everything on the Internet is “free for all” to take. Just because majority of the content on the Internet are publicly available, it doesn’t mean you are entitled to take and use it as your own. You don’t just dip your hand into the sea, fish out a design, redecorate and throw it back into the ocean as if nothing has happened. If everyone is doing it, what will happen to the design community in the future?

If we are talking about images found via Google search, they may also be protected by copyright or creative commons licenses. So what makes them think they can just use and edit it? Changing the colours doesn’t make it any more unique. All I ask for is a little respect for designs and art which I think all artists and designers out there are as well. The increase of such ignorant Internet users are really frustrating for us. I value inspiration and I’m sure all designers in our community will be glad to be a source of inspiration. But there’s also a thin line between inspiration and copying. After all the time and effort we spend working on a design, it got ripped off and the ripped design actually destroyed the original creativity and concept. Though I won’t get discouraged and will continue working on my designs, it’s actually depressing to know what happen to my creations. Will such acts cause creativity and originality to die out? What are your views?

I think I have just coin a new meaning for fishing – the act of copying in the online community. I thought it sounds nicer than just copying. =p On a last note, stop fishing for designs and create your own. Let’s work together to build a better community for everyone!

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My latest web design – Sunny Day

Dayna — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 11:22:33 +0000

I haven’t been designing much this year except the current layout at Amour Chaleur you are looking at and a few random cartoons and comics. I really like this candy house layout hence it’s going to stay till June when I’ve the time to put together a new one. So I’ve been spending some time during the past month to work on a customised layout for Diana at molemole.sg. She didn’t gave me a theme or anything so it’s just freestyle for me. I’ve only met her once or twice but she seems like a really happy, friendly and cheery person so the huge orange sun seems like a good idea to me.

Molemole.Sg" > Molemole.Sg" >

It’s a beach theme with a bit of woody feeling. It wasn’t the kind of design that I had on Amour Chaleur with splashes of colours all over. I thought it was something different from my usual colour schemes. I love taking on projects like these because every project is a learning experience for me. I get to draw new things I’ve not drawn before, like the coconut tree, slippers and seashells.

I seems to draw the weirdest thing. Bird with a black magician hat on the beach? Definitely not something realistic but then again, cartoons open the door to imagination and the unexplainable. Some may be slightly confused by the header because I have combined the sky, ocean and land together. I reckon if you are looking far away from a beach, you will somehow see the sky right above the sea too! Let’s also just say I’m kind of jealous of the layout because it looks nicer than my candy house. With that said, pop by to molemole.sg and check out the layout live!

Everyone loves candies, do you?

Dayna — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:26:28 +0000

I’ve been so engrossed with fixing this layout that for the first time in weeks, I slept at nearly 4am. o.O I decided a new layout is necessary not because I was bored of the previous one but because I think I need something new to “freshen up” the entire site. This blog hasn’t been very active lately because most of my time had been spent on last minute revisions for the upcoming examinations. I had a few other ideas for the new layout but the “Candy House” idea was my final pick.

New icons

Frequent visitors of my blog would know that I usually don’t change any of the comments design because I’m always at a lack of ideas (okay, I admit I’m lazy). This design is one of the simpler ones without much details. I didn’t have much time on hand to work on this. The entire layout took me about 6 hours and I didn’t do any detailed cross browsers checks either. I did a quick check in Opera, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari. It seems all right hence if you notice any issues, please let me know.

Panda King

Regarding this design, I have to admit I’m not a fan of candies or chocolates. Anything sweet is not exactly my cup of tea¹. However, I thought a candy house seems pretty interesting and I’m pretty sure it’s a cosy place to live in. This design is made from lollipops, colourful chocolate M&Ms, strawberries and chocolate sticks, vanilla cream, lots of melted chocolates and my trademark, panda king. No pandas were harm in the process of making this layout. anda: I hope you like it because it’s going to stay till at least April or June.

I’ve also been thinking of ideas for my blogger’s namecard. It’s been on my list of to-do for the past year but I still haven’t started yet. Perhaps I should start jotting down my ideas. What do you think of using this candy design for the namecard? Oh and if both of you are reading this, Terry and Brenda, both of you need to start too! I want one when you are done, okay? :P

I don’t think pandas like sweet stuff as well

New layout for Christmas – Zoo Mania

Dayna — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:17:32 +0000

To celebrate Christmas this season, I have launched a new layout – Zoo Mania. I wasn’t lazy this time and drew the illustration from scratch in Photoshop. Perhaps this is to make up for the previous layout where I dump everything from my old layouts together. Zoo Mania took me around 4 hours to draw the illustration and another 4 hours to code it. Did I mention how much I dislike coding layouts? Drawing is a really enjoyable process but coding is totally the opposite. The debugging process is a headache as well.

Even though you can’t see major changes in the style, I did changed the header styles. I left the comments, page navigation and footer untouched because I like it as it is now. I swear I wasn’t trying to be lazy. :P Before I introduce the main characters of this layout, I would like to thank Scholar for giving me constructive criticism and advice on how to improve this illustration.

Edit on 24 November: I ended up editing the minor style details like the page navigation, read more links, comments navigation and the footer etc because I feel that the previous styles didn’t really match the new theme. It’s more colourful now and looks like a new theme.

Let the introduction begins… …

The Zoo Mania Team

I actually like this layout. It’s been some time since I draw in Photoshop and I really enjoyed the time spend on this. I hope you like it as much as I do.

New header? It’s the Bim Bim Remix

Dayna — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:20:48 +0000

I was playing with my Photoshop the entire afternoon experimenting with typography. I have never been too bothered about the use of fonts on my website. However, I was inspired to try out something new after seeing some fantastic examples of typographical illustrations by other web designers. The Bim Bim Remix is what I’ve come up with! I’ve only changed the header so the rest of the layout looks exactly the same. I put up a poll on twitter and it’s 9 votes for Bim Bim remix and 3 votes for the previous monster layout. Sorry to all the lovers of the monster layout. Bim Bim Remix wins this round!

A storm is brewing

Dayna — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:25:01 +0000

The wind woke me up at about 7.30 in the morning yesterday. My room was surprising dark and hence I jump out of bed to see this …

The first 2 photos were taken during sunrise and the rest were taken slightly after. I’m assuming those “grey things” in the first 2 photographs are the dark clouds. I have never seen anything like those before yesterday so I thought I’ll share. Anyway, it was the right weather to be in bed so I went back to sleep after snapping those.

On a side note, I redid the design for the comments, breadcrumb navigation and finally put my library back online. I have done cross browsers checks for the comments design thus it should shows up correctly in the latest browsers. If anything is look wonky, please let me know. Tell me what you think of the new design as well, hope you like it! I was going to stick with the design from the Dear Diary layout but after a week, I realised that the comments doesn’t really match this new layout.

Let me just do a short advertisement for the Site Glamour Contest. We currently have 13 participants and a few more sponsors will be added shortly. I’m hoping to have a few more participants so please do check out the contest page and join us for a chance to win some wonderful prizes. :spin:

Invasion of the unknown!

Dayna — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:39:51 +0000

Surprise! I made this new layout during the past 24 hours, it was inspired by Oridusartic. My twitter followers might have noticed my tweets about this new layout. I don’t usually changed my layout this often but I’ve noticed a few sites with very similar designs to my previous Scrapbook layout. Hence, I decided to draw a new one yesterday. I feel honoured that someone thinks mine is good enough to be duplicated though. I might be using this design for my name cards as well, maybe replacing the devil with my trademark panda, we shall see.

So, why monsters? (Yes, it’s a monster or devil, not a cow, pig, bee or panda) I saw a tweet from Oridusartic with a link to a list of adorable monsters and I decided to try drawing something new. I’ve never drawn a monster before and let me tell you it’s super tough to draw a cute monster. The one in this layout – Blurry is not exactly adorable either. It’s my best shot though. It was without wings initially. Here are some of the different types of wings I’ve drawn for him.

Wings wings and more wings

It has a Chirstmasy feeling, no? The background isn’t very logical as well with lollipops growing on the grass. It’s suppose to be snowing as well. Nevertheless, like what Oridusartic had told me – anything can happen in “our world”. I’m still using the tab navigation style but I flip the words over so that it’s easier to read now. If you look around the website, I didn’t change all of the styles (eg. headers). I still like the old ones, plus I couldn’t think of a better one … yet. I still maintain the notebook style because of the same reason – I still like it.

I would like to express my thanks to Oridusartic, Terry, Liling, Chewy and Huaian for comments and advice before I launched the final layout. =D Credit for the post title goes to James! This layout is extremely random. I’ve no explanations as to why it is snowing when the grass is green. Why are lollipops all over the ground? Why are there shadows when there is no sun?

I have also done cross browser checks on Firefox 3.5.3, Internet Explorer 8, Google Chrome 3, Safari 4.0.2 and Opera 10. It should most probably work in the latest browsers and in resolutions of 1024×768 and above. A JavaScript enabled browser is recommended.

Hitting the books again

Dayna — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:46:52 +0000

Lunch

One thing I miss about school is having lunch. I hate to admit it but during my holidays, I tend to wake up in the afternoon so I usually skipped my lunch. After school started, I wake up at about 10am when I have afternoon classes. I have my lunch at home before going to school. Mum cooked fish fillet, harshbrown and eggs for lunch. It’s been a really long time since I last ate such a fabulous meal.

Talking about school, my first Audit class went great. The lecturer is very interesting and told us quite a bit of interesting things. One thing which I find ironic is that most of us (the Accountancy students) do not know why Debit is DR (with the R) and credit is CR. Where did the R from DR came from? =p I’m so glad to say that there are finally things I know which Chewy doesn’t. Chewy is a much better and intelligent student as compared to me. I’m rather inspired by something the lecturer told us during the class.

Life is short. Enjoy it. Everyday is an interesting day.

He told us to enjoy going for classes. Thinking about it, I can’t remember when is the last time I enjoyed and looked forward to attending classes. I think it was 2 years back while I was still in Ngee Ann Polytechnic. That was the time when I truly felt school was enjoyable. I’m happy waking up early for school, meeting my friends in the morning, having lunches together and working on projects. I missed those times. Anyway, the way that particular lecturer conducts his classes makes me remember the stuff he had said.

I am taking Financial Reporting, Information Systems & Organisation and Management Science Methods as well. ISO was boring. The problem is not with the lecturer. He’s nice, friendly and easy going. But the facts is just dry and dull. I can’t remember how many times I doze off during the first lesson. This is bad. I should sit next to the windows in the future. This will reduce the probability of falling asleep in class.

Enough about the classes, I’m extremely happy to say that I have completed my first official client’s project. The illustration of the man is based on the actual photo of the site owner. He’s a good friend of Bee Keng. I have enjoyed myself tremendously working on this project. This is my first time drawing an illustration based on a real life photograph. anda:

Junyuanlim.Com" > Junyuanlim.Com" >

Site Glamour Mascot

I mentioned about holding a Site Glamour Contest a few weeks back. I’ve set up the contest page. I took a few suggestions and made some changes to the contest. By the way, registration opens on 31st August! I need to do a bit of advertising for it. =D The blue bubbles “thing” you see on the left is the mascot of the contest. It is a robot not a dog. Chewy insisted it looks like a dog. Anyway, I think it’s so adorable that I use Miss Bubbles for my new twitter background as well. LOL! This is called “killing 2 birds with 1 stone”?

Sponsorship for the prizes of the contest is open. Thus, if anyone would like to sponsor this contest with prizes (advertising etc.), feel free to contact me about it. There are 4 sponsors currently. Thanks Ivy, Jenny, Dayze and Lissie for offering to sponsor and promote this contest.

One of the rounds of the contest is a discussion of the contestants about a certain topic and then the public will response and discuss. I need your suggestions about topics for that round. So if you have any ideas for questions or topics to discuss, please post it on the topic discussion page. I’ll be waiting to hear from you!