Redesigned: The Girl Who Wore Everything

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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.

M from The Girl Who Wore Everything was another fantastic client to work with. She she wanted her blog to look more professional & convey her love for fashion (and sparkles!). Her blog was a fairly blank slate to work with, she didn’t have any insane templates going on and she didn’t want anything insane, either.

 

I liked the glasses she was wearing in the header the presence of white space in her old design. So I incorporated those two with more fashion-iconic typefaces, glitter and a more grown-up color palette and voila!

For the fonts I used Baskerville semibold italic and Open Sans Condensed Light. For the glitter, I made my own using Pugly Pixel‘s & Scrapbook Bytes photoshop glitter tutorials. I made an animated gif of the bloglovin button so the glitter actually sparkles (FUN!). Check out The Girl Who Wore Everything to see the design in action.

 • DESIGN TIP #4: LEARN MORE, DESIGN LESS •

There are so many fantastic resources for expanding your design knowledge. My favorites are: Nicole’s Classes, Pugly Pixel, Lynda.com. There you can begin or expand on your knowledge of design-based programs like Illustrator & photoshop. All have been a fantastic resource for me as I have been trying to branch out of my very 2-dimensional design box. Go check them out.

I’m definitely speaking out of experience/mistake here, but as you do learn new tools for photo editing and design you don’t need to use all of the tools all at the same time. I remember as I was learning photoshop my freshman year of college, I applied 4-10 filters to my projects and quickly realized that many of the tools offered in these programs are spices, not staples. In illustrator, I typically stick to 2-3 tools. In photoshop, it’s about the same. This same principle applies to blogs as well. Keep it simple.

Do you have any favorite resources for expanding your design knowledge?

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    1. Jen says:

      That looks so good – still simple but very polished. Well done you! (You’ve also directed me to a blog I hadn’t found before!)

    2. Moe says:

      I am starting to learn photoshop & your suggestion of ‘spices not staples’ & ‘2-3 tools’ will help me out a lot! I am so nervous to learn new things since I like things simple. I took a graphic design class in college (I majored in ceramics) just to get a feel for programs like illustrator, photoshop, etc. Here’s to practice!

    3. Aviva says:

      I’ve found over the years that trying a new style or effect (via tutorial, like http://psd.tutsplus.com/ ) can teach you tons of neat ways to manipulate the tools in photoshop and illustrator, even if you never use that style again. I’d avise to try one that looks complicated or realistic, just to understand how it works – you’ll inevitably find practical, non-flashy ways to use your new skills!

    4. Thanks for the resources!:) I learned a lot from the crash illustrator course on vectordiary.com– the first 15 sessions are free which was really helpful to figure out if the tutorials worked for my learning style!

    5. FOZZY says:

      love how simple and clean it looks. totally chic! thank you for the links for tutorials too :) totally helpful!

    6. Shannon says:

      I think it’s a classic rookie mistake. I work in film production and you can always tell the new editors because they like to use all of the fancy transitions between shots.

      I feel like simple is a good default position. You can always embellish a bit more, but once you’ve married yourself to a fancy, complicated design it’s really hard to let go.

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