Wow, that looks different!

Change keeps life interesting, and Ka and I have had our share.

She now works as a principal in the financial services practice at The IQ Business Group. She says she'll still post to her blog here at SI as time allows.

We both are nearing the halfway point in our MBA studies, and just completed final exams for summer term. That means a bit of time off from classwork, which gave me just enough time to:

• Upgrade the system that runs the SI site from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6.
• Lay in a new design while I'm at it.

That second point marks another change for me: the first time I ever relied on design work from someone else for this site. After all, much of my experience is as a designer, and much of my consulting work covers user experience.

But that's what creative directors do: build teams of people whose skills exceed their own, then guide and adapt work to meet the needs of clients. I did that when I was an art director. I know superior work when I see it, and that's what I found in the Marinelli theme developed by Matteo Leoni. Not only is it aesthetically gorgeous, it adheres to XHTML Strict markup standards. Nice!

SI now sports the Marinelli theme with a few modifications -- couldn't keep my creative-director hands out of the design altogether:

• I didn't like the amount of space above the top navigation links, so I tightened it.
• I moved the site title and slogan around a bit in the header, to center them above the primary content area.
• I prefer to use Georgia for a Web text typeface, from among the excruciatingly limited selection of Web-safe fonts. I made the text larger, too, and put a bit more breathing room around it.
• I opened up spacing between blog post teasers on pages such as the home page.
• I added blocks to the vertical columns to the right of the main content area -- especially ensuring SID has a home.
• I replaced the beautiful header photographs that came with the theme with photos I shot (save one, which my stepson, Daniel, took in the Dominican Republic).

And I might make other tweaks, but they reflect only personal tastes and no judgment of the quality of the original theme. Suffice it to say I like this theme better than my last two designs for this site, so maybe that'll entice Ka and me to write more here. Face that thought with whatever hope or dread you feel it deserves.

Thanks, Drupal community, for great software; and thanks, Matteo, for a beautiful design theme.