Ed did it. Janet's doing it. And, since I totally lack any artistic ability and creativity, I'll do it as well. In the comments to the open thread I posted last week, pough even volunteered an initial design. As I mentioned, I liked the font but I was thinking of something, well, more microbial for the background.
As for the details, Janet notes it should be 760 pixels wide by 80 pixels high, and as she notes, nothing too garish or that would involve copyright issues. And I'll match her offer to do a blog post for the author of the design of choice, and of course give proper credit in the sidebar to said creator.
So...any takers? You can email me any creations--thanks in advance!
Comments
you guys are smart. what the readers have produced for ed and dave is top of the line aesthetically. i've had the same header on my blog for 4 years, so i can't change now :)
Posted by: razib | April 8, 2006 4:42 PM
Hey scientists with a yearning for banners with microbial backgrounds, find the graphic artists some usable photos! ;-)
The font is Georgia - for those who are interested - and the background was brown and non-microbial because Ed said Seed wanted the colours to fit the Scienceblogs theme and I had to use my own photography, which doesn't include anything microscopic.
Posted by: pough | April 8, 2006 4:53 PM
Make it mycobacteria themed!
Posted by: Joseph O'Donnell | April 8, 2006 5:19 PM
bird flu virions rewl!
Posted by: GrrlScientist | April 8, 2006 5:59 PM
..."with microbial backgrounds, find the graphic artists some usable photos!"
photo gallery of bacterial pathogens:
http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/3504/gallery.htm
Posted by: Ed Minchau | April 9, 2006 10:29 AM
The problem isn't finding the photos -- its finding the photo's in the public domain.
For instance, http://ryoko.biosci.ohio-state.edu/~parasite/images.html has many photo's, and have a non-commercial attribution copyright, but their copyright is ambiguous when it comes to use in a blog like this.
Posted by: Dan R. | April 9, 2006 3:07 PM
For what it's worth, my contributions to the effort can be found at http://www.heromachine.com/aetiology
My pick of the ones I uploaded is here.
I went with a green treatment of a close-up e. coli image in the public domain. Hope you enjoy looking at them, whichever way Dr. Smith decides to go.
Posted by: Jeff Hebert | April 9, 2006 11:02 PM
ASM's MicrobeLibrary is a good resource. According to their "about" section:
I'd think the case can certainly be argued that this website falls under #3 above, and I'm an ASM member and can contact folks to let them know the image is being used in my banner before it goes "live."
Posted by: Tara | April 10, 2006 8:44 AM
And Jeff's post got caught in the spam filter--very nice!
Posted by: Tara | April 10, 2006 8:48 AM
I like the first one in Jeff's series, with the courier font. Very Nice. I don't really care for the left justified main titles. The main title should be more prominantly and centrally displayed in my opinion.
Posted by: Dave S. | April 10, 2006 10:59 AM
I have a lot of trouble commenting on any ScienceBlog site except for Ed's for some reason. Here and over at Dr. Free-Ride's I get the "error, e-mail and name are required" message every time. If I clear cookies and cache it lets me comment but then holds it for authorization.
I have a TypeKey account (Ed's blog requires it), I don't know if that makes a difference or not.
Posted by: Jeff Hebert | April 10, 2006 12:23 PM
"what the readers have produced for ed and dave is top of the line aesthetically"
Thanks for the compliment on the CogDaily header, Razib.
Actually, the Cognitive Daily header was produced by me and Greta -- our readers had nothing to do with it (though I'm sure some of them could do better!). Greta did the cool 3-D cog and I made it into a .gif.
Posted by: Dave Munger | April 10, 2006 2:48 PM
Jeff--that happens to me as well when I switch from commenting on Ed's blog to another. It's been fine when I sign out from TypeKey before commenting. Not sure why the comment got sent to the spam filter...I'll pass along a note to our tech guy.
Posted by: Tara C. Smith | April 11, 2006 10:26 AM