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In the end, I keep the design extremely simple. I made the assumption of 640 screen width 8 bit depth, 14.4kbps or better. Basically, I keep graphics to a minimum, and just for flavor. The end result is mixed. I think it's somewhat of a distraction. If you haven't studied Graphic Design principles, you may wonder why.
Here's why. Traditionally, when you divide a web page between navigation and content, you color the navigation and leave the content white. If you want to get fancy, you'd put a thin horizontal line at the top, separating the header. What I did was to switch the color on opposite section, thereby creating an anti-symmetric look. In fact, with the ratio as they are, they look surprisingly similar to a spiral. I purposely left a thin white space between them.
Now here's the trick. Just about anybody can find the center of the spiral. In fact, your eyes are inexplicably drawn toward it. So it's very hard to concentrate on the content. It's very distracting, yet nothing is blinking, and everything is just static. So, even with just structure, I can force your eyes to focus on a certain spot. In fact, that spot is colorless.
Thanks to the dark color bands, though, your eyes will perceive something to be there. This discoloration phenomena is widely documented as visual tricks. The problem is, it doesn't work. That is, it works on paper, but it really doesn't work on computer monitors. Why? I don't know. Maybe the relatively low-resolution monitor compared to paper. Maybe because it's light, rather than reflected light. I don't know. But I do know that you should see something. Therefore, I manually color the spot very subtly, just like it should. Presto, visual trick.
If you don't know what to look for, you'll be very distracted and utterly confused. If you do know what to look for, I hope you'd appreciate that I did this. Of course, this layout may not stay too long. The effect _is_ rather strong, and very distracting. It is, however, original.