I have started this log ages after I actually started creating the website... I'm near to the end of creation of my website... but I'm gonna try my best to write down details of the process.
Around the time I started learning HTML and CSS, I was really into the Frutiger Aero aesthetic of old computers; those aesthetic images with the VAIO logo on them, Windows 7, Windows Vista, things of that sort. I have always been a massive Twin Peaks fan (massive is an overstatement, I just really like it) as well as a fan of Persona 4. These were my main inspirations during the creation of my website. My initial designs had extensive and dynamic elements that I chose to later scrap because they would either look bad or be too much work or both.
My initial design involved a sidebar and a main screen that looked either like Liquid Glass or the Aero aesthetic from Windows 7. Ever seen a comic book in real life? The middle part where the book slightly dips at the fold is called the gutter. I had intentions to create a gutter effect between the sidebar and main screen. I even started working on the design until I realised that my draft for this design was horribly misdrawn. It took me ages to create a border effect that looked like the sidebar curved into a gutter. Which I had to discard anyway because it didn't fit the drawing...
Some of the design elements that I implemented carried over to the final design I settled on, namely the sidebar and main element combination. This design was ultimately discarded because I couldn't come up with a draft schematic good enough for me to use as a reference. It was all just castles in the sky. I didn't really know what I wanted.
The second scrapped design was not entertained for a long time, but it was monumental in pinning down my ideology for the website. I wanted to have the background as the red curtains from the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks and the background of the sidebar as the tiling design of the Black Lodge. The transition effect between two pages would be the curtains closing and opening. This design was scrapped because I didn't think it would be right to outright copy a design of another series. Although I really love Twin Peaks and although it was incredibly influential on the way I think of different series, making it the main theme of my personal website felt disrespectful in a way. It would work as a nice reference as such, but my plans to completely copy it weren't right.
The third design was a Persona 4 UI inspired design. Persona 4's UI is very well designed to give off the feel of old late-90s to early-2000s weather channel, which ties in to its aesthetic really well. I really liked that aesthetic and was inspired by it. My initial design was to repurpose the Aero feel from the first design and make it more weather-channel-esque. The current design for the website uses the layout I drafted for this design, but is dichromatic instead of being Aero. The reason I scrapped the original idea was because I went onto Neocities and I found out that a LOT of websites are inspired by the early Windows Aero aesthetic, which is what I planned on going with. Now normally I wouldn't have given this any thought, but another issue hit the website design; 'twas a skill issue. Hence, I decided to implement an easier design in order to meet my self assigned deadline of 4th September (my birthday).
a conclusion? What is this, eighth grade? There's no conclusion to this! I made this website to make my inane ramblings easily accessible to people! But I guess if I were to write a conclusion for this article, it would be that sometimes it's fine if you don't achieve the 'dream' state that you wish for in any situation (which in this case would be my website). You can always try again, and now that you have more experience compared to before (VERY much so in my case), you will have an easier time navigating the bizarre and intimidating landscape of life. Or the internet. Either goes.