Redesigned: Fantabulously Frugal

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During Chris’s two and a half weeks of Christmas vacation, we spent our time redesigning a few blogs. We had a grand time working together & making the interwebs a tiny bit prettier. I’ll be sharing a finished project each week along with a design tip (or two) for a better blog.

It was my sincere pleasure to work on the site: Fantabulously Frugal. Lisa was a gem to work with!

Before I got started the elements on the page had no heirarchy & the ads weren’t very organized. A lot of the work involved in this redesign was on Chris’s end of things, with reorganizing the sidebar so that it would read well on the page AND so that it could be easily editable on Lisa’s end of things.

There were a few things I did like about her blog & incorporated in the redesign: unexpected color palette, stripes and handmade elements. Since her site is deal/ad-based, I felt like the handwritten details made it look more approachable, but then kept it professional looking. I made a very fine diagonal stripe for the background & softened her color palette to a charcoal/navy/purple color family. Doing this redesign was so satisfying; like organizing-my-closet-by color-with-all-matching-hangers satisfying.

What do you think? Head on over to Fantabulously Frugal for the full after (and for info on killer deals).

• Blog tip #3: DESIGN + ADS •

If you’re thinking about starting a blog with ads or you’re planning on adding advertisements to your current blog; you need to know standard ad sizes. We talked about this a little bit at Alt this past year. Large companies that are looking to advertise with Google or ad networks use standard sizes for their ad campaigns. Check out IAB for standard ad dimensions, file sizes & animation length. It’s a fabulous resource for bloggers & companies. See below for the most popular of the standard ad sizes:

  • Leaderboard: 728 x 90 pixels
  • Medium Rectangle: 300 x 250 pixels
  • Wide Skyscraper: 160 x 600 pixels
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    1. Madeline says:

      SO PRETTY!

    2. Ashlee says:

      SO lovely! what a transformation

    3. Katie says:

      Thanks for the info about the ad sizes. I had no idea! I’ve been blogging for three years and I still feel left in the dark about how to successfully host ads on my blog so that it brings in some kind of revenue. It’s hard to pick up on it when so many bloggers are so hush hush about their ad process. You know?

    4. Katie says:

      P.S. I forgot to say, great job on the redesign!

    5. Jeanee says:

      What an improvement! Nice work. Logo is fab too :)

    6. Rhianon H says:

      Great re-design Melissa! Just looking at the previous design it looks like it would be hard to dig into. But you did a awesome job, Kudos!

    7. megannielsen says:

      Oh what a gorgeous re-design! I love what you did – i’m always so impressed by your work my friend!!

    8. I love the clean look of the redesign– and the color scheme! Its amazing how sleek and professional the redesign has made the content look!

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