Current Design

Version: Restless Reborn
Started: 2023
Returned: 2026
Header texture: blue hydrangea photo taken by me at Keukenhof, 2015
Tools: Affinity, Phoenix Code, HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap

The current design of Restless began in 2023, when I started looking through my own photos for a soft texture to use in the header. I did not want a paper or grunge texture this time. I wanted something dreamlike, blue, and a little melancholic.

Eventually I found a photo I had taken at Keukenhof in 2015. The blue hydrangeas (Hortensia in Dutch) immediately caught my attention, and I used them as the base for the header. You cannot really see the flower clearly anymore, because I covered it with my usual old web shrine editing sauce: Gaussian blur, Median blur, and a bokeh effect.

The flower became more like a memory in the background than a clear image. Soft, melancholic, and a little dreamlike — just like the hidden side of Seymour I wanted the layout to reflect.

Hydrangeas are native to East Asia, especially China, Japan, and Korea. They are known for their clusters of cloud-like flowers.

I find this very fitting, because Spira is inspired by Asia, especially Japan.

So the design became a bridge between the real world and Spira: a flower I photographed in the Netherlands, edited into something soft, blue, and dreamlike for a shrine about Seymour Guado from Final Fantasy X.