Suggestions for new site banners

[Jessamine Blake]

I've been working on a few ideas for a new site banner, and so far I've only finished one of them. I'd meant to do a lot more over the weekend, but alas, the demands of the rest of my life managed to horn in and root out that particular goal.

Still, I managed to whip up some things tonight. Below is the link to my first candidate for the new site banner. Any comments or critiques are welcome, and I'll be putting up more of these as I'm able to make more. Also, if anyone has any suggestions for a banner, that's great also.

I was going to just post the image here, but something funky happened with the display and it cut the banner in half. So you can view it here:

https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/img25/5897/gearbanner2copy.png

[Seth Ruggeri]

I'm really impressed. I love the font choice and color tones you used. I'll try setting your design as a temp banner later today to see how it looks. Great job on a first entry. Keep 'em coming.

[Mr. Pearse]

If there's a way to make "Romance" a bit clearer and to slightly reduce the stuff coming off of the a's, I think we already have a winner. That wheel is badass.

[Allie Johnson]

*sigh*
My dear Mr Pearse. That would be a gear.

I like it. I think it's perfect and puts just enough emphasis on the steampunk nature of the changes that are happening to the New Mexico territory during the story.

[Mr. Pearse]

So I just tried it out, and tiny nitpicks aside, the big thing that needs to be done is to sync the banner background up with the background for the site. Here's a link to the image we're using:

http://hitskin.com/themes/12/59/32/i_background.jpg

If I didn't make it clear in my last post, I was VERY impressed by that design. Awesome work.

[Ethan Ramey]

On the subject of the current background...

The look of it definitely works for the site, but I have one complaint. It's obviously a repeating image, and the spot where one image ends and the next begins presents as a noticeable horizontal line across the screen. Unfortunately, it does this four or five times on every page, and it kinda ruins the effect for me. Just a little change in shading could help it, if I could convince Jessamine (she insists I call her this on the site) to work on it.

[Jessamine Blake]

Thanks to everyone for all the kind feedback! I feel...so appreciated...

I'm going to try out the site's background on the banner hopefully sometime today. This has been a crazy week, in just about every way possible. I haven't had time to read things on here, much less contribute anything myself. But now, I have a nice, long (and SNOWY!!) weekend to catch up.

I'm still working on alternate ideas. I love the overwhelming support for this particular one, but I say to myself, "What if we tire of it someday?" Or what if it doesn't work with the background we have? It's always good to have a backup option right?

I also think I could correct the shading issue that causes the problem Ramey was talking about. I'll just have to play around with it and see what works out.

[Mr. Pearse]

All of this sounds good to me. Pulling together the theme for this site was the most visually-minded thing I've done in about seven years, and reminded me more than ever that I do not have a future in graphic design. Anyway, the background image is already posted and Rugg-dawg or myself will be happy to upload any changes. Also let us know if you want to play around with (or flat-out change) any other colors, buttons, images, and we'll post the original links for those files, too.

[Ethan Ramey]

Whatever we do, we should try to get to it soon. I like the site as is, but I'm amped to see the new banner go up.

[Jessamine Blake]

I really, REALLY am going to work on that as soon as possible. I've been kind of overloaded with school lately, and as a result I've been stingey with my free time, but I'm going to work on the banner and some background options THIS WEEKEND, I promise. And Ethan Ramey will hold me to it.

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