Looked and Felt

26 May 2016

Some days ago, people who consume this 'blog by an ordinary visit with a graphics-enabled browser were confronted with different graphics within the header. The prior and present graphics look like this [image of archaic header lettering, white] but, for a while, the graphics looked like this [image of art-deco header lettering, metallic with grey borders] and then like this [image of art-deco header lettering, the larger being metallic with grey borders and the smaller being white with grey borders]

I had been in the mood to try a change. I constructed some new letters of a general form that I like, which used to be popular for the cover titles of pulps and of comic books. I decided to give them a metallic look (which was done by layering gradient fills of blue-grey).

But my big problem with the results was readability, especially of the subtitle. Changing the subtitle fill from a metallic texture to a solid white helped somewhat, but readability still wasn't what I wanted. The problem was even worse when displayed on my tablet, which resizes images to suit itself and can thereby further blur graphics.

Additionally, though I don't worry a great deal about the æsthetic opinions of others when it comes to my 'blog, both of the people who expressed a preference expressed it for the prior lettering. (One of them declared the newer graphics to be faux-cool.)

I may not be done with these experiments though. I've been thinking of converting the visual theme of this 'blog into a meta-theme, whose graphic components vary, perhaps as a function of time or perhaps randomly or pseudo-randomly.

I have played-around with elements for a distinct presentation to mobile devices, but I note that the screens of typical mobile devices are now fairly large and of high resolution. Meanwhile, the current presentation actually seems pretty good on my agèd cellular phone, which has a screen with a 3.1-inch diagonal, with 480×640 pixels.

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