Working on My Header (October 4, 2016)

After a few busy days, I finally got to the third assignment of my Intermediate Customization course yesterday. This assignment called me to work on a new design for my header.

At first, I thought I would lead the header image alone. I mean, I like the image of Delicate Arch, although it is cropped. I like the contrast with the blue sky and orange/brown rock and the image sets up a relaxing tone for the entire website.

But I ultimately felt that I needed to at least come up with some concepts.

Here are a couple of thumbnails I worked on:

I wanted to capture a profile of a thinking person.

Basically, I wanted a new header that would take into account the types of things I write about. Also, I wanted to make a college that had the same spirit as an image found on a blog post aimed at career seekers and at least one of its variants. Both thumbnails have the general idea, but I thought my job ended here since it was only conceptual.

But when I finally dug into this assignment, I ultimately decided to try out Canva. Most of the elements offered were free; others were available for $1 US. I used the free elements.

When working in Canva, I forgot to set the right dimensions for the header. That became a problem when uploading the image, but it kinda worked for the best. I would need to fill out much of the white space, but the visual elements occupied their space well.

This is the original image:

It terms out that was the right height for me to work with when I made adjustments to the canvas in Photoshop. For the Lovecraft theme, I needed to have a banner that was 1280 pixels by 444 pixels.

After numerous attempts, I was finally able to create a banner that took the recommended dimensions. At first, the images I uploaded were either stretched and pixelated or cut off. I also ran into issues with some of the text being hidden by theme elements.

Here is the final result (for when I eventually change the banner):

I would like to go with the same theme and create something phenomenal. For now, I might still use the current banner as a placeholder.

For anyone reading this, what do you think of the general idea?