After drwcentral.net was converted from a static site to a database-driven format, I decided to commemorate the changes with a site-wide redesign. Looking back, I believe this was a horrible idea as the design I was using at the time was one of the better ones I’ve ever put together.
I went with a darker design than I had previously been using on drwcentral.net, with the page background set to a grey textured image and black borders surrounding the content. The page was broken into two columns – rather than the three that I had used before and have used since – with the navigation in a bar across the top of the page and repeated in the page footer.
The drwcentral.net wordmark (“drwcentral.net” in the Concielian font) stretched across the top of the page beside an image of the Detroit Red Wings’ logo (or the 2002 Stanley Cup logo in the weeks following Detroit’s Stanley Cup Championship). Other graphical elements of the site included images of the “Believe” patch worn on Red Wings jerseys during the 1997-98 season in honor of Vladimir Konstantinov and Sergei Mnatsakonov and of a red, white and blue ribbon in memory of those lost in the 9-11 attacks on New York and Washington. In what was probably overkill, those images appeared on every page of the site.
When drwcentral.net became DetroitHockey.Net in September 2002, a DetroitHockey.Net wordmark replaced the drwcentral.net text in the page header, with the DetroitHockey.Net shield logo replacing a Red Wings logo in the banner. Everything else on the site remained the same until the November 2002 redesign of DetroitHockey.Net.
The above text and image were copied directly from my original portfolio as I imported it over to the blog. It was not updated for re-publishing.