I’ve been toying with a slightly different design for the site over the last couple of days, and have put up a sample for your perusal. It requires very little changes to the HTML code (the main menu was the only part that required any serious re-writing), with almost everything handled via the style sheet, so converting the entire site over to this alternate version would be an incredibly straightforward task.

While I’m actually pretty happy with the current design overall, there are, I think, some areas where it could be improved. The biggest issue for me is that it feels a bit cramped, something that the alternate design addresses by adding in more white space. It also clearly differentiates between the main column and the sidebar, by separating them and making one a different colour. In addition, it makes the title for each page more prominent (by separating it from the main body) and standardises the fonts, so that every item of text defaults to Helvetica (with Arial as a fallback), barring the Georgia “curly quote” at the start of each blockquote.

If you have the time, please take a look at the alternate design and let me know what you think. I could live with either, but have a slight preference for the alternate version, and could convert the whole site over to it without much hassle if there’s a general consensus that it’s better.