Anybody want to redesign my site for me?

It’s gonna need pink. Lots of pink. And big, hard, nippleless breasts.

What in the world am I babbling about? Well, quite simply, I think that Shelley has a good point about some aspects of the Blogger redesign…

Speaking of looks, if you read Phil’s comments, you’ll see I was not happy about Zeldman’s Ms. Moto and Mr. Moto templates. The one for Mr. Moto shows a classic gray, very professional looking weblog with a photo of a building in one of the posts. However, the one for Ms. Moto is all in purple/pinks, and shows a photo of a Barbie doll in the example post.

What is the message from these templates? That men have professional looking sites, while women favor pink and dolls? I am surprised at an experienced man like Zeldman perpetuating this type of stereotype. As Mark Pilgrim said in Phil’s post, yes men and women may both like pink sites. I don’t have a problem with pink; it was the gender association (not to mention the doll–was that an accident?) that grabbed me. There were other templates that also featured pink, or rose, but none of them made an association with a gender through the name. No big deal you say? By itself, no. But after three years of girlism and baring breasts as fund raisers, not to mention being told time and again how ladies are supposed to act in this environment, and how women webloggers only write about home while men write about politics and tech–I am weary of how much weblogging promotes stereotypes. I stopped pointing out how woman don’t seem to get the same notice as men in weblogging when it comes to writing in order not to perpetuate a stereotype; the least others can do is not make associations between female bloggers and Barbie dolls. Mark “The Pink” Pilgrim has hinted that he’ll probably do a redesign, perhaps based on pink and dolls. Dolls with big, hard nippleless breasts. If so, and I see several men sporting the new Ms. Moto look, I will be less inclined to be critical. So, guys show me that Ms. Moto is genderless and protect Zeldman’s honor at the same time. If you have Blogger, pick that template, but don’t forget to add in a doll or two. If not, then do something comparable in your own toolset. Then I’ll know pink and dolls aren’t just ‘girly’ things, they’re also for manly mans. We’ll have a contest. Maybe Mark and Zeldman will judge.

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p>I am so up for this. However, I’m not really that much of a designer (especially when it comes to using graphics or color), and I just dealt with the frustration of a mere tweak of this design, and I’m not terribly sure I want to start from scratch again.

So, a challenge.

If anyone out there is crazy enough to give me a design to use, I’ll use it. In fact, if I even get people telling me that they’ll work on it, I’ll go down to the local Hot Topic, blow a little money, and then send the prospective designers pictures of me to incorporate in the design (even though I’m conspicuously missing the big, hard nippleless breasts) in my 14-eye Doc Marten boots, black Utilikilt, and each of the following three shirts: the pink skull, “Pink is the new black”, and “Tough guys wear pink”.

Anybody up to this? Should anyone actually want to tackle this, I only have a few simple requests:

  1. I’d like to keep the basic structure I have set up right now: two columns, main content on the left, sidebar on the right, main content appearing first in the HTML, post metadata just underneath the title, etc.
  2. Take a look at my current source code and CSS to see how I’ve been doing things so far — while that shouldn’t limit what you come up with, it’ll at least give you a good idea of how I think when I piece things together.
  3. Update: Now that new designs have started to appear, here’s my original stylesheet: styles-default.css.

And really, that’s about it. I’m up for just about anything, and I’ll gladly work with someone to make sure that their ideas and design drop in here without too many issues.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot I can offer for compensation, other than the general fun of doing it. If you come up with something that might work as repayment, though (aside from the obligatory “Design by…” link on the page), feel free to suggest it, and we’ll see what can be worked out.

iTunes: “Got Me Wrong” by Alice in Chains from the album Sap (1992, 4:12).

[See also: Manly Pink: The photos | Manly Pink #1 | Irony, copyright, and site design | Welcome back WaSP | Just an idea ]

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