New Blog Theme: Law Actually 2.0

Yes, it’s official: Law Actually 2.0 has arrived.  My previous blog design had been in place since May 2007 and it was coming to the end of its planned two year service.  I felt it served Law Actually well and was obviously based heavily on the visual style adopted by the film, Love Actually, to which this blog duly owes its name.  I know – I’m not particularly proud of it!  Alas the style was getting a little long in the tooth and I’ve wanted a 2nd sidebar to accommodate the growing content for a while now.

So, yeah, here it is.  This style wasn’t my first choice.  I had initially opted for something a bit more laid-back and, dare I use the word, grungy!!  You can check that style out over at my other (and now defunct) blog, F1 Central.  It’s a kind of ‘what might have been’. 

Feedback from my ‘focus group’ suggested it wasn’t ‘lawwy enough’ and perhaps was a touch too grungy.  I don’t know: I still kind of like it. 

So, I duly went back to the drawing board and came up with another design for Law Actually 2.0.  I reverted to a style which incorporated red as a key colour and law-ed it up a bit more.  It was going to adopt a filmstrip design as part of the header and footer, but ultimately I felt that little ‘Polaroid stills’ looked better.  Some of my annotations seem a bit lame but it’s a work in progress, I guess.  Plus, with this style, I can change the header photos and annotations as and when the mood takes me, which, if history is anything to go by, will probably be quite often. 

The new design isn’t perfect and I’m still fiddling here and there. Not-so-fun-fact: I’ve given myself no end of trouble by word-wrapping post photos to the text (particularly blockquote text) for the past year and a bit which I’ll probably have to go back and change.  It looks really bad in Internet Explorer, but, I guess, if you’re using that browser, you’ve brought it on yourself.  I’m just kidding.