[thelist] CSS design help

[Seyon]

Hi John,

It seems that your major questions are not actually about CSS, but rather 
about graphic design in general. If you're looking for inspiration 
sometimes the best place to look is offline. Magazines, cookie boxes, 
recipe books, etc. You might also take a look at "Web Graphics for 
Non-Designers" by evolt's own Adrian Roselli (et al).

>At this point, I have simple ideas about general layout (content
>centered, simple banner on top, simple nav menu beneath that, all
>bordered by a nostalgic, Americana-style ribbon graphic), color theme
>(maroon, deep blue, and cream white), and navigation (generic top
>menu, with 'product' categories and products in more detail on drill
>down).

This isn't a hard layout to build. You could take a look at one of these 
sites for some basic templates:
http://thenoodleincident.com/ specifically 
http://thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/
http://www.glish.com/

http://www.csszengarden.com/ is also a popular CSS plug.


>I guess I'm feeling way out of my league and looking for a few ideas
>to help me get started, pointers to resources (where would one find
>graphics in such a style

clipart, stock photography sites like corbis.com, commissioning a graphic 
artist

>or how would you go about creating them

I wouldn't as I'm no artist myself, but if I were it'd be playing around 
with software like Paintshop or CorelDraw or Photoshop.

>or converting hand-drawn images to Web-usable graphics?)

Any one of the applications mentioned above, or others, and a decent 
scanner. Or even a good digital camera if you're nifty with document 
capture. At the ad agency where I used to work I would often see the 
artists drawing effects on paper then scanning as they were more 
comfortable with pens and markers and brushes than drawing with a mouse.

>I realize these requests range everywhere from completely obscure to
>bordering on professionally intrusive, but I would appreciate any help
>I can get from the community of designers on this list.

I think your best bet will be to make *a* start. That will help you figure 
out more precisely what it is you want to accomplish, and also what 
specific difficulties you're encountering. It'll be easier for us to help 
you at that point.

regards.
-marc

--
Trinidad Carnival in all its photographic glory. Playyuhself.com
http://www.playyuhself.com/