The creative process on this one started around the idea of comic strips, where people’s thoughts are portrayed as floating in clouds connected to the thinker with a series of puffs resembling bubbles.
So I got to thinking about a photo-realistic version of this concept, and came up with actual bubbles coming out of a real head via the magic of Photoshop.
It seemed to me that the thinker should always be below the bubbles, and the solution I liked best was fixed positioning.
Following on with the comic strip idea, I thought about how it is not only words that are used in the balloons, but also symbols such as light bulbs or lightning bolts.
So at the beginning of the header for each post, you can place an icon signifying your mood. They are placed through a combination of CSS and custom fields that change the h2 class depending on what you type into the “mood” field for the article. (Click on Advanced Options to make it show up.)
The ones I’ve created are: bolt, bomb, heart, mag (a magnifying glass), music, ribbon and tools. Just type in one of those words to get an icon.
You could easily make your own icons with Photoshop. Mine are 24pt on a black background with a canvas of 30px by 30px. I found Webdings and Wingdings handy.
You could also put your own head in the template. Just make sure you have a black background. By the way, that’s a stock.xchng head in the template — not mine.
All in all, this is meant to be a personal blog — you’re thoughts as you think them up.
So let’s pick up those tools and start working. On the other hand, we’ve a heat wave going here, and maybe it’s better to just relax.
Ribbons are used to help you remember things, such as buying more milk for the kids or the date of your wedding anniversary or maybe that special achievement in elementary school . . .
This is a heartfelt attempt at writing post that could use a heart icon.
This is just an excuse to use the magnifying glass.
What a disaster this turned out to be. Hmm. Better use the bomb icon.
Not really worth having an icon for the headline. In fact, why am I even writing this? Oh yeah, to show what a headline without an icon looks like.
Have you heard the soundtrack to the Clifford the Big Red Dog computer game? Good. Because it gets stuck in your head real fast.