Good Design Goes a Long Way

When things look good we tend to feel better about them.  Almost every woman has a killer dress or man a sharp cut suit, that puts an extra bounce in your step when you wear them.  It might be the crisp lines, a body hugging shape or even a particular shade of color, but something about it elevates everything around you a notch or two.

The same principle applies to cars, homes and even websites.  My previous layout was the bastard lovechild of Geocities and Livejournal.  Here’s a pic in case the nightmares had faded.

I was happy with the content and this theme got me up and running while looking decent, but it was missing the polished appearance I always wanted.  My previous theme clocked in at over 1 MB (just by itself) and wasn’t as optimized for speed as I would have liked.  That coupled with too many widgets/plugins/etc, made this site run as gracefully as a beaten donkey.  Even with this kind of bandwidth (jealous RetroHack?), it was taking too long to load.  Like my first car, this sucker had taken me as far as it could go and I needed to put it out of its misery.

After much debate, I bit the bullet and snagged the ever popular Thesis theme.  A clean, sharp, dead easy to customize WordPress theme with thousands of community members freely sharing their collective wisdom on.  For a code moron such as myself, I found the countless tutorials simple to follow, allowing me to achieve stunning results with NO heavy lifting.

It’s not cheap, especially when comparing it to all the FREE themes out there, but honestly, it was either shit or get off the pot for me.  Was Cuban Nomad going to be a serious effort or another half-assed, failed attempt on my part to be a creator instead of a consumer?  I’ve had a good run with this blog so far, in spite of all the “real life” crap in the background, and I know I have a lot more left to say, so forward was the only direction I could go in.

What this site will become, I still have no idea (that’s another post all together), but I will continue to pour myself into it, stirring the pot until something bubbles up.

Has taking the extra effort to make something look better helped you reach your goals?  Did it coincide with truly getting serious about achieving them?

Related posts: (Auto Generated)

1. The Dust Settles I wasn’t sure what to expect after writing my last...
2. Goals for October Often times when writing fiction, you’ll find yourself in a...
3. Creativity alone will not sustain you The hopeless Dreamer is a staple of the creative stereotype. ...
4. WordPress Plugins Over the years I’ve indulged in many different blogs, some...
5. WordPress Plugins Spotlight: Comments When I come across a sharp new blog I often...