I'm having a heck of a time trying to create something good, fresh, and exciting for my project. I may be getting bogged down by starting from an existing blog template. I thought about starting from scratch, until it started working well, and now it isn't. I did it the same way with this one, but I established most of the colour scheme based on my site, where the colour came by accident.

I have these fantastic palettes of colour in Illustrator, and while together they look amazing, separately they're... bland and boring. And yet, if I go for bright, it's too much. I think that's where the variable tonality of images comes in.

I have pictures in my head of what it could look like constantly going by, yet I think of the possibilities offered by boxes, and I'm just not feeling it. I mean, it looks fine. People can use it. Whatever... but it doesn't feel like food. It feels like a twig of wheat. It's too cooshy. Not edgy enough.

More time is spent thinking, reading, observing, and writing than form-building. Dobson says, just make tons of form. Make tons of crap and you'll end up with something. I definitely made tons of really horrible comps on the last project, which is what a designer is supposed to do. Tons of bad ideas. Part of the pressure here, though, is trying to reach a certain threshold for what a grad project is supposed to be. Yet more ideas, but are they feasable? Is it me? Is it appropriate?

<<<Insert big frustration word here in all caps followed by several exclamation marks>>>

Oh, I know.

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There.

*Sigh*

Now that wasn't so bad, was it?

This project has been nothing but creative blocks and mental self-mutilation. "What was I thinking?!" "I wasn't thinking!" "I misinterpreted what you meant by presenting with boards." "Paper's too shiny." "God, that's ugly." "This isn't good enough. You're not good enough. I give up." "You're not spending enough time on this." "Boring." "I'm not feeling it." "Sigh."

I'm thinking maybe starting with the blog isn't such a good idea. I'm also thinking about abandoning it being all done in MovableType, but we'll see. I do just as well with XHTML. Maybe I'll create a blank white box with a grey border in CSS and see what happens. Fill it in mentally with a pencil crayon. Go to my sketchbook with a set of colours that work well together and just muck around. It worked the last time.

Argh.