Posts Tagged ‘redesign’

Redesigned: Simply Modern Mom

April 18th, 2012
5 Comments

I can’t tell you how excited I am about this design. Chris keeps telling me that this is possibly the best site design I’ve done to date. Chris is great at boosting my ego.

Fellow blog friend, Tiffany, approached me a few months ago to see if I could rebrand her site for her. Her previous branding wasn’t bad, but it didn’t really say anything about her personality or her style.

I modified her color scheme slightly by adding warm grey tones and a couple of pinker maroons in the mix. There’s a lot more dimension than a typical monochromatic scheme. I had fun lettering items for her and I love how the lettering combines with the slab serif font used in her titles. I couldn’t be more thrilled about how it all turned out. Check out Simply Modern Mom to see all of the little details. I’m not taking on any new freelance projects at the moment, but please check out the designers featured in the ad section of the sidebar. They’re all incredibly talented and available for work.

Design Tip #7: Fonts, Fonts!

Most sites these days allow for Google Web Fonts or TypeKit. If you’re unsure what these options are, you need to head over and check them out. Stat. It’s nice having lots of options, but PLEASE choose wisely. Just because it’s available to you, doesn’t mean you have to use it in every instance. It’s great to have custom fonts, but try to avoid using more than two (three MAX) on your blog. Having multiple fonts keeps your readers from understanding hierarchy of information and it’s hard to read!

Pick one font and stick to that. If you are going with one font, make sure it’s readable. DO NOT USE SCRIPT OR HANDWRITTEN FONTS FOR PARAGRAPH TEXT. Can I emphasize that any more? Sans serif and serif fonts are the best for one font choice. If you’re going with two different fonts, choose one font that will be your title font (this can be more ornate, but don’t go crazy!) and one for your main text. Google Web Fonts allows for multiple views when looking for the right font, so you can see how readable your font is in a title instance and in a paragraph instance. Take advantage of that tool.

Also, with web font accessibility, there’s no reason to image your text. For wordpress users, get rid of your TTF titles plugin you downloaded  3 years ago and use web fonts! Your site will load faster and your site’s SEO will thank you.

 

Redesigned: Orange Tree Studios

February 29th, 2012
7 Comments

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.

I can’t seem to find Ashley’s before image, but the design before we got to it was nothing heinous or special. It had a simple grey background and bold text for the header.

Ashley is a photography blogger who is absolutely obsessed with Design Love Fest (come on, who isn’t?). She wanted her site to be accessible to teens (she does high school portraiture) and their parents, but more polished than sites like American Eagle or Roxy. After several different iterations we got the above result. Often times it’s clients who really push designers into new directions and broaden their styles. And this design was definitely the case. I don’t typically design in photoshop, but with this design I did (the drawn elements at least). This design style has definitely given me a lot to think about as I move forward with my own design and the branding for my online calligraphy course.

I thought I’d forego any blog/design tips today and share with you a couple of the unused iterations for Orange Tree Studios.

This was the first iteration. Ashley didn’t like the script font (Antrokas– great in small doses!). It definitely made me realize how dependent I am on script fonts/calligraphy in my designs.

This is the second iteration. I didn’t use any script fonts, but the color scheme may have been a little too varied. The orange slice needed to go, too. I used Blanch Inline for the header font and Alexandria FLF for the titles.

Again, I’m really happy with the finished product, I just wanted to share those other directions with you. I felt like they were great, but just not the direction Ashley wanted.

Redesigned: Fantabulously Frugal

January 25th, 2012
9 Comments

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

Knit Top To Pillow Refashion

May 11th, 2011
4 Comments

In that stash of goodies my friend Dani gave me, was a pretty Ann Taylor sweater. I didn’t get any before photos, but it was a basic long sleeve sweater, circa the early 2000s.

I cut off the sleeves & sewed all the openings closed. I originally made this pillow for Penelope’s bed, but as it turns out, it matches the outer teal border on our new quilt! It’ll likely go down to P’s room, though. Chris hates extra pillows.

I still have the sleeves from the sweater, so I’m thinking I’ll use those to make some pretty little leg warmers for the P-nut.

Paper Wings Blog Redesign

April 19th, 2010
2 Comments

I did a blog redesign for a lovely lady this last week. I’m really happy with how the whole thing turned out, and I wanted to share the outcome with you.

Tracy of Paper Wings was just so lovely to work with. She was so good at explaining to me what she wanted, and just a 100% awesome client to work with. I was really, really happy when she said, “OHHHHHHHHH MYYYYYYYY GOOOOOOOOODNESS! I absolutely L-O-V-E it!” after I sent her the final proofs. Squeal! I love positive feedback. Don’t you?

Thrifty & Chic will be postponed until Wednesday, but it’s going to be really rad. Stay tuned for a sweet giveaway!

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