when i started ysmarko a little over four years ago, i grabbed a clean and simple free wordpress template called “benevolence”, with a cross-section of green grass sprouting across the header. a little while later, ys online dude at the time, will leingang, helped me a tweak it a tiny bit. but for the most part, i’ve had that same old template for four years straight. and these days, i see so many blog designs i love (and quite a few i really don’t like). i spoke with adam mclane, my coworker at ys, about redesigning the whole thing. adam asked me to identify a bunch of blogs i liked (the look of), so he could get an idea of what i was thinking. after looking at a few hundred, it was obvious i don’t go for the ones with lots of clutter and darkness. i like clean. and i knew i wanted a twitter feed, and a current reading list, and a few other things. so adam asked ys media scion ian robertson to whip up a little ysmarko logo, then adam presented me with a string of ever-evolving possibilities.

and here it is!

i hope you like it; but, ultimately, i chose it because i like it.

the tabs at the top give a few more biographical options. the right side has the twitter feed (it had a facebook status feed also, but that seems to not be working with facebook’s redesign; so it might be back later), a few other sets of unobtrusive links, and my current reads. clean, baby, but with some life to it. yeah.

there are a bunch of back-end changes also, like the permalinks are now the titles of the posts, rather than a number; so you should be able to find specific posts more easily (as should google).

anyhoo. thanks to ian and adam (and i think jonathan matlock also).

whatcha think?