Every year, Mr C and I sit down and watch the Apple Design awards. Every year we download several of the apps that we’ve missed over the months. And every single year, Mr C says: “They should do more with the design awards, a podcast, a TV show. You should blog it.” I was confident I already had, and looking through the archives proves me right, but I can’t quite believe it was four years ago.

Recently, I sat down and wrote a draft in Ghost about Ghost. Meta. It was an update on my experiences so far, which ended up as a bit of a complaint. I’m still in love with the concept of Ghost, but the gist of my dissatisfaction was two-fold. On Film Watch, I miss the comments. Moving to Ghost meant either switching on Disqus or going without comments. I opted for the latter, because I dislike that Disqus has rubbish integration, layout and login options, plus it stores the comments when I’d rather have a feeling of control over them. As it turns out, Film Watch is something that feels like it needs comments. Discussing my reviews and what other people think about the films is something I really miss. The options here then, Disqus as mentioned above, returning to Wordpress or just putting up with it.

Some may recall the phase I went through, designing lots of headers for this site. I gave it up because… well, I wasn’t that good and I wasn’t really getting much better, and I moved on to other exciting creative things. BUT, you know, sometimes, of a Saturday night, you get the creative urge to mess about with Pixelmator. I wasn’t planning a new header, but I followed a random tutorial, and ended up with this. I liked it so much that I decided it was time for an update.

I went back to good old Abduzeedo for this one, the tutorial for Abstract Wallpaper. I tweaked the colours a little and made it my own, following the tutorial exactly made it too dark for my tastes. As ever, I have used Anivers for the font, as it matches the text on the blog. You’ll notice that there is no month in the header this time out. I’ve been quite lucky that I had a productive few months earlier in the year and had some spare designs in the bank, but now I have run out. I’ve been busy doing other things, such as writing books, and so whilst I do still enjoy creating the headers, it is not a priority at the moment.

I was somewhat loathe to get rid of last month’s header. I did so enjoy the purpleness of it. However, a new month means a new design and this is what I have got. My aim with this one was to take something that I attempted to do in the previous batch of headers and do it better. So, last time I used a skyline sillhouette: City Skyline Nice enough, but I can see exactly how it came together and could probably replicate it in seconds. This took a lot more tweaking, and I like it better.

This header came about suddenly at the last minute, but was a culmination of a lot of experimentation during the month. Firstly, the typeface is the one I use for headers on the blog - Anivers. When I made the changes with Typekit, it suddenly made the existing header look a bit strange. I’ve already mentioned that I need to find a way to make text look more integrated with the pictures rather than stuck on at the last minute, but somehow the typeface tweaks made it seem even more obvious.

It’s always going to be hard to follow the panda success of March, and that being the case, I present you with a header I actually made beforehand. It was based on this tutorial but I went wrong somewhere along the way. I ended up with a dark pink nightmare, that was far too black. I threw the tutorial away, tweaked some bits and pieces, and most importantly, changed the background colour from pink to this glorious green.

So, I reckon this could be the best header I’ve ever made. The idea came to me while I was in the middle of quite a lengthy drive, which was more than frustrating, but by the time I got my hands on Pixelmator, I was ready for the challenge. I found some creative commons photos, via vladdythephotogeek and used a tiny portion of this comic style tutorial. The font is Meiryo, and was possibly the toughest part of the whole thing. Everything I tried took away from the awesomeness of the pandas, until it became obvious that less is more.

Mr C spotted the tutorial for this over on the Pixelmator site, and I was keen to give it a go. It certainly looked like a challenge, and it came right about the time we were talking all things space, and that programme was on the BBC and everything. I didn’t really like the clock bit in the middle, so I just replaced it with another planet. It kinda makes less sense now, but it’s just pretty planets anyway, so I like it more.

For the new, I’m switching up the way I change headers on the site. I’d come to a position where I could make a perfectly good header in a week and that was fine. I could keep on finding brushes and doing what I could, but a week wasn’t really long enough to make anything particularly special. Instead, I’m going to do a monthly header, with the hopes that I can spend more time on them and keep up the learning process, rather than settling for what could be done in such a short space of time.

I wanted to do something to commemorate all the snow we have been having recently, and I pondered the idea of taking a photo of the white stuff, but didn’t find it all that inspiring. Instead, I went in search of some snow-related brushes and found some really good ones. With a bit of adjustment to the scatter patterns, this is what I came up with. Made with: Pixelmator Font: Plantaganet Cherokee Brushes: Snowflake Vector Brushes

This one started when I was investigating the Quartz Composer, and found the option of radiating circles outwards. I can’t quite remember which one it is, but once I had that and I added in some of the best colour in the world - purple - I had it set. Made with: Pixelmator Font: Didot Brushes: Nature (I think these came with Pixelmator)

I found the gradient tool under Quartz Composer, and whilst you can easily make a gradient with the required colours in the toolbar, this purple one was too good not to use! After pondering some new brushes, this header was conceived. Made with: Pixelmator Font: #PCMyungjo Quartz Composer - Generator - Gradient Brushes: Glowing Stars

I was just messing around with some filters for this one, and really loved the dotty effect. Then browsing through fonts found this one which just seemed to fit really well. Also, the turquoise/green colour sets the effect off. It was simple to make, but I think it’s quite effective. Made with: Pixelmator Font: Desdemona Quartz Composer

With a new month, comes a new batch of headers, and with a new site, we have a new start. Instead of the Smarter Than Your Average banner of old, I’ve changed to the new site name, and that gives a bit more space. For this header, the first inspiration came from the colours - I wanted to mix a deep red/purple with a nice cream. Et voilà!

The votes have been pouring in, thanks to everyone, and we have our winning header design. The winning design is the rather whimsical Gretna Green signpost. Excellent stuff! That will be the header for the next few weeks, whilst I gather inspiration for the next batch of designs.

We have reached the end of another batch of headers, and as is the custom, we’re going to have a vote. All you need to do is pick out which is your favourite of the ten headers featured over the last few weeks. I’ll keep the vote up for a few days, and then the winning design will be up there for the rest of October. That gives me a chance to sit back, take stock, scout around for inspiration and get designing.

Here it is, then, the final header of our second batch. We’ve reached our twentieth design, which honestly blows my mind a little bit. This one came from the background texture, which was a kind of wallpaper, I think. I wasn’t keen on it being wallpaper, so I tried the stripy filter to sort of bring it to life a bit. It could almost be a curtain, with ripples in, except they are a bit too regimented, and a bit too diagonal as well. Once again, I was playing around with the text, as that is somewhere I really need to concentrate my efforts.

Back to a bit of simplicity, I found these brushes that seemed to me like twigs and sticks rather than brush strokes, so I went with a sort of tree theme. I was also testing out filters on the text to try and make things stand out a bit more. Made with: Pixelmator Brushes: Brush Pen marks Filters: Motion Blur Font: STFangsong

I stumbled across some brushes that show off city skylines, and I was intrigued. Admittedly, most of the hard work for this one was done for me, but I still think it’s a lot of fun. My only question is, which city is it?? Made with: Pixelmator Brushes: Famous City Skylines Font: TW Cen MT Filters: Sunbeam and cloud generator

All I can say is this is my favourite header that I’ve ever done, I think. Made with: Pixelmator Font: Rockwell Filters: Just a bit of motion blur on the text

I’ve been going through a bit of an obsession with the stripe effect, and this is another one that began with that. A couple of brushes, and for the first time I played around with the edges to make it not quite as rectangular and full of straight lines. Made with: Pixelmator Brushes: Floral Decor Art Brushes Font: Party LET Filter: Stylize / Edge Work

Ahh, that makes a nice and classy change from that last header, doesn’t it? I was mostly inspired by the image used to promote the brushes for this one. Something nice, bold simple and blue. It pretty much fits the bill. Although it has just occurred to me that the bit in the middle looks like a moustache. Made with: Pixelmator Brushes: Baroque Ornaments Font: Copperplate Gothic Bold

I started with the brushes and was working purple on white. It was an interesting start, but it wasn’t quite what I was after. Then I put the spirals in place and applied one of the blending options (I forget which) and this amazing thing happened. I’m pretty sure it’s channelling E4, although entirely unintentional. Made with: Pixelmator Brushes: Circle and Brush Font: Arial Rounded MT Bold

This one may not be as spick and span as some of the others I’ve come up with, but the point about this header is that I made it up and created it all from scratch. The wavy background was done by hand, which is why it’s slightly bumpy, although I secretly think that adds to the charm. Plus I was trying to use some nice bright colours to make a change to the more subtle tones I am always tempted by.

I stumbled upon these brushes of electric poles, wires and birds. It seemed like such an odd combination that I instantly downloaded them to play around with. Turns out it was a lot of fun, particularly when you had tiny wires and enormous birds. Of course, I had to get a bit more sensible with proportions for the finished product, and I hope I got it right. The text was a real nightmare. I started out with a wibbly wobbly thing but I didn’t feel like it worked properly. It looked something like this.

It’s time for our next set of headers to appear (although technically this should have gone up yesterday - shhh). This first one was never intended to be a header, I was just messing around with the original photo, taken in Gretna Green. It’s silly, and it won’t win any design prizes, but I like it. Made with: Pixelmator Original photo: Welcome to Gretna Green Filters: Sepia colour, small amount of noise Font: Helvetica

We all know that I have a love/hate relationship with Twitter. I swore off it for a while, and when I returned I left the design as a default wallpaper - one you can get to under the settings tab. I looked on as many, many people put photographs and custom backgrounds on their Twitter account, and I never really felt the need to do the same. Since the World Cup began and Tweetdeck had all manner of problems (not all brought on themselves), I started going to the website to tweet more and more. At least when you see a fail whale you know where you stand.

Thank you to everyone who voted in my July Header poll. More than anything, I was blown away by the 40 votes. What lovely people you all are. For a while, three headers had made a break for the lead - with numbers 4, 9 and 10 all on equal footing. Then 4 fell behind, and up until about ten minutes ago, the remaining two were tied for the lead.

A while ago, Janna asked if there was going to be a vote on which was the favourite header. I thought that was a good idea, but as it’s an ongoing project, I wasn’t sure how voting would fit in. However, now I have completed the tenth header image, I thought it would be the perfect time to take a break. It’s always good to recharge one’s batteries, sit back and take stock of what you’ve achieved, and more importantly, find inspiration for the future.

I wasn’t quite sure where I was going with this header. I hadn’t found a tutorial that inspired me and I just felt like messing about. It was relatively easy to make the light burst thing, and I accidentally stumbled across the repetition filter. Getting the one Smarter Than Your Average text to stand out was a bit harder, but in the end, I was quite happy with how it turned out.

I found a tutorial during the week that I wanted to try out, but I wasn’t sure which picture would work best translated into a pencil drawing. The tutorial is very simple, so I tried it out on a couple of waterfall shaped pictures but it didn’t work. This one I was sure wouldn’t work either, but low and behold, there it was. The font and the rest was easy to choose.

It wasn’t my intent but looking at the finished product this week, I’ve realised how very Doctor Who it is. I must have been subconsciously influenced by this because I certainly wasn’t aiming for a Doctor Who header. My favourite part was the blur filter to create the light effect. So simple! Anyway, here are the details: Made with: Pixelmator Tutorial: Hexagons Bokeh Font: Gloucester MT Extra Condensed (rasterised and widened)

I started working on a cloud text tutorial but got a little bit frustrated, so I scrapped that. Instead, I swung my tutorials net a bit wider and found a grass and glass video on YouTube. It was really quite easy, and such a striking look! Made with: Pixelmator Tutorial: Glass Font: Impact Background Image: Grass Pack I

For the first time in this series, I spotted an image during the week and saved it to a folder called: Inspiration. Get me! So, It’s not a carbon copy but it’s similar and I love it. I made it pretty hard for myself though. For a start, I was sitting outside in the sunshine, so the colours weren’t exactly as I thought. Thankfully, they didn’t clash terribly once I’d adjusted to the gloom of inside again. Secondly, as I was sitting outside, I was using the trackpad, rather than a mouse. Not easy. Lastly, I had no idea what I was doing, so I made great use of the “copy to new layer” feature. One layer of gray, one of pink, copy the grey bits I wanted and then hide the existing layer. I’m sure there’s an easier way, though.

This one is just so very Sex & the City, isn’t it? I started out with a straight line of text, then played about with size, bold and italics, plus made good use of the ruler to move it above and below the regular line. Great fun. The background came afterwards, a simple cloud filter and purple colour (which adds to the Sex & the City vibe, I feel).

I was following a tutorial up to a point and then decided I liked how it looked in black and white without adding any of the colours. A lot of the tutorials I’ve looked at seem to like multi-coloured colour burns. I’m not so keen on them, but tutorials are there to be expanded on, aren’t they? Made with: Pixelmator Tutorial: Colorful Bokeh Effect Font: Impact Mr C and I had a bit of a discussion about Impact vs Haettenschweiler. The one time he actually got to impart some of his new-found typography knowledge onto me.

I found the brushes whilst browsing on BrushEezy and knew I wanted to use them up for something. I’m not happy with the way the one in the top right doesn’t end properly, whereas the one in the bottom left does. The idea of big brushes in the background to temper the dark foreground ones is fascinating. I played around with the text a lot and couldn’t really get anything I was happy with so I ended up going with a simple filter.

I really love this one. Made with: Pixelmator Tutorial for the text: Golden Text in Pixelmator Font: Garamond Background Images Set 9

Instead of a page with a long list of the header images created, I thought it might be more useful to give each it’s own blog post - with notes for future reference on what I did, the tools used, and whether it was a success or a failure. The first of my brand new header images was really just a big ball of experimentation. I had never worked with brushes before so I was playing about and seeing what worked and what didn’t.

I’ve gone into a bit of a nostalgic mode for my little corner of the web, as I suddenly have the urge to dig up all the posts I wrote for previous blogs I’ve owned. Particularly, of course, the personal blog that disappeared to be replaced by this one. (Although don’t forget that nothing is ever truly gone on the web!) Anyway, I think perhaps because I am also looking at new themes for this blog, I suddenly remembered that I used to create my own header images. Gah. What was I thinking? I am clueless when it comes to images. Words are my preferred medium. It is not a coincidence that I chose my current theme which doesn’t require a header image.