You are not alone. I also miss the colored pencils. Those pencils really were a welcoming sight and are one of my favorite web banners all time. The colors just made me want to drop everything and start creating!

The new banners are also really great - and all about creativity, so they would fit the idea of the site. But if it ever came to a vote, I'd have to vote for the beautiful pencils banner. Maybe if they were made smaller, they would make a nice bottom-of-the-page border?

What about using something like this? Take the original pencil banner, and make the letters out of it. Here is a quick attempt (I'm sure you could it better):


(This would not be the banner itself, just the lettering part)

Very good idea, SailsAgain. I'll check it out.

Looks good...
or even this:

I like that one. I like the menu bar on it too, but unfortunately it will be cut off at the edge by the background gradient.

I thought the grey colour might be extended like the blue shiny bar at the bottom with a website sliver? (I don't know how that works. )

I think that the pencils banner looked better then the way it is right now. Livelier.

If you copy the sliver, use the bucket tool and fill an image that is whatever you want wide by 200px high, you will see it spread out.

The Wilber banner up there is 930x200px.

Demo here.

I think I managed to delete the sliver somwhere in between saving to .png and editing the still open image later.

Your sliver seems to be 2 pixels too low.

make that, almost fixed while I clicked preview.

You can create a sliver by copying the first row of pixels in the banner. I can then extend that sliver with html (css).

Wonder how many people will be clicking the menu options in the banner, thinking they might actually do something..


I agree that the first one I had up was a little plain but I was shooting for a good starting point.

I like these pencils, too.

I like the width of Jolie's pencil letters better. The ratio of w & h is also better. If I made the font I used smaller, it would be too short. Her font is best, IMO.

I probably will if the banner is visible when I have GIMP open. I try to do it a lot on screen shots. Doesn't work and if I have a paint tool selected I end up with paint on my screen shots.

Yes I like those pencils too. Couldn't find the font so went with the closest to it.
Is it possible to fix that line at the bottom?

I click on screen shot menus too.

I have a toolbox on my youtube channel with background the same colour as my wallpaper, but so far I haven't actually clicked on it yet, so won't be that bad.

What are you seeing?

The line looks OK on my screen. Make sure you fully clear the cache and refresh the screen.

We might want to try a few different fonts styles until we settle in on the best fit. Nothing is struck in rock around here.

The first time I refreshed there was a discrepancy in the bottom line, but the next time I did it was good. Looks good to me.

I'm seeing a blue thin line of 2 or 3 pixels in between the forum and the banner. In IE too. It doesn't look bad, but thought it would look better without it. Make it look like Wilber's brush is sticking out of the banner and hanging over the bit where the forum has started.

I'm with ya. Refresh and check it now. It does look better without the extra line.

So this is the current banner:



So this is the sliver taken from it.


So if you make another banner that looks like this. (I'm gonna make a banner in 5 seconds)


the sliver will look like this:


(Hope you can see it properly since I used white. Stupid of me. You have to take my word for it that that's a white vertical line with a bit of red in the middle. Sorry. )

The point is, that you can't make the sliver until you know where the horizontal red line in the banner is gonna be. And you'll decide that while working on the banner.

Just don't put a blue dot on the edges because then you'll get a sliver that will create a blue line to the sides of the banner.

Worked with the pencils.

I like that one too, O.

Let's put it up and check it out..