My very first layout featuring a photo I took of a window in a B&B in Tasmania, Australia. I loved the pattern and colours casted from the light entering through the gauze curtains. Not much design done. Just tweaking html codes for element placement.

I asked my friend, Nadine to help me draw these characters. The Japanese words read “baka no onna” meaning “stupid girl”. Yes, I am the said stupid girl. The amount of self confidence I have…*sigh*

I started to do a bit more “design” so to speak, by cutting out images (no AI back then to help you remove background) and playing around with font. I was very much into Ayumi Hamasaki then, so she graced my first proper design layout.

Did I not say I have a dark side? I was doing my polytechnic internship then and feeling rather stressed, so I tapped into my dark side. Borrowed the lyrics of Avril Lavigne’s “My Happy Ending”. Changed the layout to something more structured for better scalability on different screen resolutions.

This is my favourite quote from “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer”. It encapsulates my struggles during my polytechnic days. I was struggling a lot with self confidence. Every time I felt a bit more confident of what I was doing, something/someone would break that confidence to the point I wondered if I was just being too proud of myself when I was actually nothing. This quote still comes to mind many times when I feel defeated.

A layout gifted by Nadine. She did it in a side scrolling style. I guess it was kinda cool back then. Featuring Ayumi Hamasaki again.

But you see, that is how I learn…by checking out others’ codes and figuring out how things work. I used Nadine’s codes for side scrolling layout and designed my own layout. Featuring Hilary Duff.

Back to the structured layout. Featuring my roller skates boy, Massu!

I think you can tell that my dark side still shows…

Got rid of one column for the tagboard. I think the readability is much better like this. I learnt how to blend images here, thanks to Nadine. Utada Hikaru’s “Final Distance” is such a sad tune. She expresses longing so well…both visually and in tune.

In my photo blending era. Featuring Morning Musume.

Featuring Berryz Koubou.

One thing about JPop idols like JE boys and Hello! Project, they get lots of photoshoots with multiple photos in the same shoot. That makes it easy to create headers with blended photos. Here, I feature Ai Takahashi of Morning Musume. I started to do slicing of images for more design freedom. Image fonts became buttons.

My last self-designed layout featuring the wonderful Olivia Lufkin. I still love her songs loads coz her lyrics can be very poetic. She has a whimsical imagination that shows in her MVs and doodles. She is sometimes in touch with her dark side, so her music can go from pop to rock. Very much me at times, just that I don’t visually express my dark side. But yes, I love black and red and slightly morbid things too. Can I also say she expresses emotions very well in her music especially as NANA’s Serizawa Reira. The sadness and longing of the character comes out very well in “Shadow of Love”, which I have dubbed as the saddest song EVER. It is also my favourite song from Olivia. I can understand some Japanese, so I can understand the lyrics and feel the emotions in the words.

Sidenote: Look at the taskbar of my screenshot! It’s Windows XP! Omg…so ancient. But I really love the rounded cuteness of the elements in Windows XP. This version of Windows will remain my favourite solely based on design.