Alifbépé ~ ا ب پ

I was telling a friend the other day how a rather plainly built single room dwelling with a small veranda could be made both aesthetically pleasing and very livable. I told him how I would never have a simple brickface on the outside plastered. The windows would have square panes and be painted ivory (#FFFFF0 to be precise). Then I would plant a deciduous ivy and train it onto the walls. I will let the vines dangle in front of the windows as it thrives in summer, watch the leaves turn red in November, and soon, a beautifully bare meshwork would appear all around the quarters.

Inside, I would arrange a few effigies of the human beings I admire, very few pictures of friends, family and perhaps some woman I love, and the strings I have collected over the past years; a small rug and a mattress on the floor, three chairs, a study table and lamp, two bookcases, a computer—and an airconditioner. If I don’t have to worry about overhead power lines, I would also grow a Shisham (Indian Rosewood) beside the door and wish for some peace and quiet. If the idea is not novel, at least, it is refreshing.

For sure, I will not be building any such retreat anytime soon, but it brings me to the idea’s remote implementation on this website’s design and layout. A homepage could be beautiful in a different way from the homeplace. We cannot share with everyone our music, thoughts, books and haunts in physical space, but we can do so in cyberspace with far greater independence, grace, and probability that they will be worth someone’s while.

Speaking of web design, the obvious rules are coherence, navigational ease and visual warmth, but novices like me can only pick and choose, from what the experts offer most often and generously as “open source web design”. I will simply list links to resources that have helped me make the most of my abilities at such alien work.

“Writing specifications is like writing a novel. Writing code is like writing poetry.”

Web Design Credits

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