10.15.06: Colors of the Web ‹ Blog

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight. . . The truly wise person is colorblind.
Albert Schweitzer

Colors of the Wind Web

October 15, 2006

Just so you know, I had an excellent entry written up on Friday the 13th, with all this stuff about my funny name and my funny in-laws and my funny cat (who, for the record, is not completely black, but is just black enough that I felt obliged to kick her out of the way every time she tried to cross my path), but then I went to check over it just before uploading, and that process went something like this: “Riffs on my name: check. Riffs on my cat: check. Riffs on my in-laws: check… oh. Oh, no. Um.” Because I don’t really want me or my husband to get Dooced from the family, even if it is a hoot that they can’t remember what our names and surnames are (Romee and Toni HISBACHELORNAME? Tony and Romi HERMAIDENNAME? Mrs. Toney ANTIQUATEDPATRIARCHALNAMINGCUSTOM?). Best to just let that dog lie, and settle for passive-aggressively getting everyone elses’ names wrong, too. (My mother-in-law is now LaToya Shrapnel.)

Today I am working on my work site (appropriately), which I will of course present to you for mirth and mockery when it’s a little older, but right now it’s a little preemie baby and it’s very sensitive. It’s taking me a ridiculously long time to put it together, it being my first real work site and me being quite nervous about getting everything right. A web designer creating a site is like an English teacher writing a book: it has to be perfect, or else there will be bad reviews and rotten produce. One little error, and you’re going to be pilloried. Pilloried, I say!

I spent yesterday picking out a color scheme, which turned out to be considerably more engrossing than I’d intended. I’m not an artist by any means, but I do like to think I have a good eye for color. I’d decided on a mostly-blue layout, with touches of yellow or orange here and there. And plenty of white, to make it look all crisp and clean. And five minutes into it, my fingers were digging painfully into my scalp and I was saying BLUE! BLUE! FUCKING BLUE! so loudly that the cat got scared. Why did I pick blue? WHY, GOD, WHY?? Blue is a bitch to work with, I can tell you. Blue has to be exactly the right shade, or else blue does not play well with others. I had forgotten how much blue hates me. I had forgotten that ancient grudge we had. Blue is a ninja waiting to ambush me in the dark corners of the internet. Blue goes for the eyes first, and not in a good way. Blue fights dirty. Blue always wins.

But I am a ninja of web design, and I am always ready for a color-fight. I am the rock to blue’s scissors. I am the anvil to blue’s Wile E. Coyote. I am invincible. Blue put up a fight, but by the end of the day, blue was slathered across the screen like a smushed blue bug, and I was victorious. Take that, blue.

(Incidentally, I am also designing another blue site right now, a fan site and fanlisting for one of the USAs I so adore. There were color wars on this site, too, but then blue and grey hooked up and a very little (underage?) purple joined in (color orgy!), so it’s kind of grayish-periwinkle now, which… does not sound very pretty when I put it that way. But it is rather pretty, as you’ll soon see.)