[disregard please lol] how do you settle on a theme for your project(s)?

[hauntinginprogress]

    
editing this post to make some corrections and whatnot:

1. when i talk about choosing an aesthetic, i don't mean following some sort of strict guideline or anything, i genuinely just mean the visuals!!
2.the reason why this is so important to me is because i find my artistic eye to be really important to my entire identity online and offline!
3. i'm honestly not struggling with this anymore in all honesty  !!!!! i've managed to find a theme i find pretty appealing :]

you can still read what i posted below but i'd appreciate it if no more replies would be made. thank ya!!


hi melonlanders! how do YOU successfully choose a theme/aesthetic for your project(s)?

hellooo! as i continue to work on my own personal project i find myself continuously getting stumped    by something that is arguably very important:
i have no clue how to settle on a theme/an aesthetic for my page!
if i can't decide this, how can i even get a FULL v1 out? 

i've been digging around and looking at a variety of other awesome sites and pages, gathering inspiration and whatnot, but that can only get me so far.

so, i thought i might as well ask in a place where people who have solved this dilemma for their OWN projects can chime in with their own two cents and experiences! 

of course there's the obvious factor of making something that reflects what you love and what you think is important to you...but there's just sooo much to think about!!! aaaaaa

[drmollytov]

One of my college professors once told me that "a piece of writing is not finished, only abandoned." That's kind of how I feel about Web sites I make, haha.

Tl;dr version - I don't "settle." I make a site, I mess with it, I move on. I paid for a Neocities account so I could do that without having to remember a separate login for every site. Currently I have one with games and movies that has a cyberpunk vibe, one for political writing that's aiming for a Unix terminal feel, a personal startpage that uses the CSS at http://thelcars.com, and the one with my username on it that I break every week, CSS-wise, on purpose.

(The one I think of as my "main" site is triple-hosted on the Web, Gemini, and Gopher, so it doesn't have a theme. Is this cheating? Maybe.)

[Corrupted Unicorn]

I don't.

When I made my website, I didn't have the "space background with rainbow checkers" thing down yet. I had the space background at first, yeah, but the only reason it stays is because I like it, because I feel like I'm looking at the infinite when I'm looking at my website. But the other parts have been changing all the time. First they were just placeholders until I came up with "cooler" stuff or stuff I liked better. You can see that on my current title graphic and navigation buttons, and, for comparison, here's the old graphics.

I don't like aiming for an aesthetic (something like, "I'm going to make my website look like frutiger aero/Y2K/kawaii goth") because I hate labels/pigeonholing myself. Some people like consistency across all their pages, I don't. I can and I WILL have my glittery rainbow pages AND my dark edgy emo pages, thank you 

I think you're thinking you have to "get it right" the first time. This is a limiting thought that you find a lot in other creative areas such as writing and drawing. The good thing of being a webweaver is that you only have to answer to yourself.

So my recommendation is... simply put the things you like on your site. Pick your favourite wallpaper out of all the ones you've seen so far, recreate that cool layout you've seen, add a sprinkle of fun GIFs of your choosing. 

Does it look good? Yes, no? Is there something you'd like to change? You can change things again if you don't like them, and keep the things that you do like or make sense to you. Trial and error can be the name of the game.

If it helps, sometimes I like to lightly sketch my layouts on paper. Also, when it comes to websites, I'm more of a writer than a coder, so I try to focus on what I have to say over how it looks. I also like to reuse code for my pages (hey, as long as it works) and change the background and colours to something more fitting: you can see that on my shrines, for example. And again, if you have a better idea, try it out! One of my shrines used the "template" code I use for the others until I decided that it could use a different layout.

And hey, in case you can't still decide, theme changers always exist 

[SCLPTURES]

personally i just grabbed a bunch of stuff i thought looked cool & put them together. of course my style evolved and changed overtime which just shows that you don't have to limit yourself when it comes to aesthetics. the great thing about personal sites is that you don't have a set theme to adhere to, so you can change it however you want, whenever you want

the best thing to do is to consult yourself, what do you like? surfing the net to find different backgrounds, borders etc. you enjoy can help you get the ball rolling. and of course it doesn't have to be anything crazy, plain text on the main background can also work, i redesigned my website a while ago to adhere to that without diminishing my personal style

i dont really have anything else to say, everyone in this thread summed it up perfectly. don't limit yourself to labels and take it easy!

[xwindows]

if i can't decide this, how can i even get a FULL v1 out?

You can: by following the MotherFuckingWebsite.com's principles. (1)

I happened to have a software, which is a sort of proof-of-concept reverse-engineering project; and I have released it on the WWW with full homepage and everything, despite the fact that I still haven't worked out what decor to use for its website-- even now!

Instead of taking the easy way out like many "kids these days" would do (2), I simply designed the site as if it was a report printed on a paper-- but instead of typing it in the word processor, I typed it up by hand, in HTML and only HTML; no styling at all.

The thing I kept in mind while making that is that "what exact set of information I have to give to people" who passed by in order to be informed enough about my software (3), and type them in as bare prose.

And the result has been perfectly serviceable as a software homepage; it got description, it got screenshot, it got downloads (including binary downloads), it got full manuals. It's readable without JavaS'creep on desktop and mobile, including on the crummiest feature phone limping along on a 6 KiB/sec 2G connection.

User who wish to experiment could go download and test that out without having to second-guess; and developers can even read the reverse-engineering whitepaper that come with it without a hitch. (4) I dare say that this site is more user-informing than 75% of code-barfed "projects" on Micro$oft GitHub.

Thus this is considered "Mission Freaking Accomplished"... without any sort of "theming" at all.

Of course, styling and illustrating that site are still on my TODO list; but now I could do them at my leisure (5), since the "actual project" was the software, and not the site design itself. Websites with complete and worthwhile information are treasure, no matter how unstyled that was.


On the flipside, I have a future section planned for my personal website dedicated for music playlists. I have already "finished" arranging and writing about the first playlist I would like to add for like half a year now, but I have yet to finish styling and illustrating the pages of that section. And for this one, I decided to hold off the entire section's release, until I have finished all that.

Why?

Because I treat this as an "unofficial fanmade indie music album" project. Which for such thing, it wouldn't be just audio and playback order that mattered: presentation, aesthetics, and vibe were all in the play. Unlike software project which what mattered was the functionality and factual information on how to operate it; music is about experience. Simply linking a playlist file from a bland webpage would make it a very mundane experience indeed.

I intend for this to be special; so I'm going to make sure that the first impression I made being precisely nailed.

To style or not to style, that is the question; but once you could determine whether you aim at making a site to disseminate information, or making it to impress someone; I trust that a suitable answer for the first question will come to you.


P.S. The "unstyled style" of websites is known in some literature as "Prof. Dr. Style".

(1) If carpet F-bomb-style of manifesto isn't your jam, see this one instead.

(2) Which comprises of barfing it onto the code-launderer-disguised-as-forge-platform GitHub and call it a day.

(3) Note that the I didn't say "to use my software", because I'm not trying to convince them. If they think it fitted their bill, then that's nice for them; but if they don't think so, that's fine too. That's also a reason why I "advertise" the list of limitations up front; I wish more programs actually do that instead of having users find out about them the hard way.

(4) And I believe it is the most complete description of file format used in this family of program that you could find online.

(5) I consider the lack of documentation a blocker-priority in my own software release. If the manual and website wasn't satisfactory information-wise, I hold off releasing that software.

[Metropolis]

I made my website a blue city theme, honestly I just decided on that because I love big cities and blue is my favourite colour. I suppose i was also influenced by learning about the aesthetic "cybercore" and "webcore"

When i initially made my website I just chose random images which I liked as the background without a significant theme. But then I started to browse other websites and wanted to have more of a theme on my website.

Honestly I would say browse pintrest and look at other sites, see what sort of colours and ui design you are drawn too
Then implement those things into your site.