If I went with that sort of aesthetic for my website, I'd probably go for saturated colors of some kind -- deep blues and violets perhaps, like the irises I love. Deep night, over the ocean, beneath a sea of stars. Or maybe rich reds and golds, with a sari fabric pattern as a border. I like the old world aesthetics too, the faded glories, but I think the jewel-tones would win.
But I didn't do any of that with my website, and it wasn't for lack of options along those lines. Some of the other websites I've looked at seem most focused on catching attention somehow -- with something bright and sparkly shouting 'lookatme lookatme!" And that definitely doesn't appeal to me either. It's exhausting.
I think in the end, I instinctively prioritized clarity. Transparency, if you will. I couldn't give up color entirely (as some people do, with black text on white background), but I only allowed myself a minimum of color. Everything else on my journal and website is designed to optimize clarity, to make it as easy as possible to read the text and focus on that. That was the goal, at any rate, whether you think I achieved it or not. Which makes me wonder -- I designed these pages a decade ago. I hadn't studied pedagogical theories about transparency at that point, hadn't formed any conscious philosophies along those lines. Has my entire life been a movement towards greater transparency, clarity of communication? Is that just innate to who I am?
Odd thoughts for morning. I'd best go get some tea and get to work.
I wonder how much difference it makes how differently people perceive the colors on a monitor. I always keep Mozilla set so that it shows text as yellow and backgrounds as black. After reading this entry, I looked at your page colors as you set them up. If I read it in the white-on-light-blue that you use for very long, it would give me a headache, or at the very least make my eyes tired. I don’t know whether it is the crt flicker or just the brightness. I don’t mind at all reading black print on light or white paper, but on a crt monitor it is different. I do not know whether a non-crt monitor would make a difference or not.
Sorry…the post above is from me.