• Reported by Nate

What is the best way to get from point A to point B when designing with web standards? Perhaps we agree that a key difference in the process is that one begins with the semantic coding structure, and then uses CSS to present the design as one wishes. A fantastic example of this is CSS Zen Garden with its many beautiful design variations.
I've noticed that in re-designing webgraphics, I'm perhaps not following this methodology properly. Instead, I have a pre-concieved design that Pepe created in Adobe Illustrator (thanks Pepe!), and I am re-building section by section to emulate that design. This is much the way table based designs are done, and the assumed risk is that the semantic meaning will be lost in an effort to present the design just so. Or maybe not.
There is more than one way to skin a cat, even when it comes to semantic structure, and so, given two "proper" ways to markup a given chunk, would it not be better to choose the one that is more easily suited for the design you had in mind? This may be a missunderstanding on my part, espeically given that any element can be altered from it's default display state with CSS - which theoretically could let you do almost anything with any element. I say theoretically because unless you want to create a complex web of CSS filters, you'll still want to have your design look right in a core base of newer browsers, and so at least some complexity will find it's way in to all but the simplest designs somehow.
Right this second (written a few days before the new design is revealed), the semantic structure is acceptable although probably not ideal. I'll be calling on some help from Joshua and Dan Rubin, who hopefully will be able to improve the implementation here by taking a gander at what I've done with fresh eyes.