Year 3 design refresh is a slow, but steady progress

The first step of the design refresh is complete. The new header is in place and I have the dark/light toggle setup. I have moved over the design into a new skin on this site, and it is now time to rebuild the custom templates to make them work with the dark/light toggle. Overall, I am happy with the changes so far, but there is a lot to do going forward.

Adding the Dark/Light toggle was a bit of a struggle to get the cookies setting right, while also maintaining the original concept. The fact that I wrote the code in the middle of the night when I should be sleeping might have had an impact on that, though. One benefit of having this switch is that it show very clearly where the original design deviated from the standard. It might sound like a simple thing, but going back and remake the designs will not only allow me to make things right, it also is a good learning experience into the Invision Community variables.

My next step is now to redesign the footer, since it contain a lot of code I no longer need. There are some bugs involved in the footer as well, so I will take care of those at the same time. After that, I will focus on the pages templates. For them, I will just start with adjusting the CSS so they use the variables instead of hard color values.

With this now in place, I will add all of this to Figma so I can start working on making designs for the many pages I plan for year 3. I already have colors and fonts setup, but I need to recreate and set up the header and footer and then redesign the blocks and heroes a bit. Once I have that, I can start creating new designs. Since I now have two designs with the light/dark mode feature, I will need to make multiple versions of each design, though. It will be extra interesting!

The first pages that I will build are the sections of course. I have had this on my to-do list for 2 years now, so it is time. The start page also will get a facelift with a proper design. Here I have collected ideas for a while and I think I have a design in mind, but it includes buying some more images from Shutterstock. Since I want the most bang for my buck, I am collecting graphics to fill up the 750 images I plan to purchase. It is actually not as easy as it sounds to collect that many, but I'll get it done.

So things are moving forward, slowly, but surely.