On Monday I launched the brand new Leaving Work Behind.
What you saw was the culmination of months of hard work. The creation of a brand new design (that completely matched the vision I had in my head), a manifesto and community forums was a far greater challenge than I originally envisaged, but I am delighted with the outcome.
I now feel like I have a solid foundation upon which I can build something that will have a hugely beneficial impact on many people’s lives.
Over the next few weeks I will be exploring elements of the new and improved Leaving Work Behind in order to reveal the thinking behind the finished product. In this post I am going to focus on the design in great detail – from the inspiration and thinking behind it to the entire design process from start to finish.
Why Did I Want a New Design?
I’d received plenty of compliments about the old Leaving Work Behind design in the past, but I was never totally happy with it. It always felt like a placeholder to me.
While I was very happy with certain elements of the design (such as the logo, introduced as part of my May 2012 re-launch), its structure and style did not ultimately reflect where I wanted the site to be.
I wanted something that really looked the part. Something that truly reflected the strength of my desire to help people. To revert to British slang, I wanted something that looked like the dog’s bollocks:
Beyond that, I wanted a design that was built from the ground up to capture email addresses. While in the past I have been relatively reticent to get readers to sign up via email, I am now fully reconciled to the realization that the best possible way I can help people is by making my way into their inboxes.
Why? Because it is only through email that I can feed people information in an ordered, chronological format. Blogs don’t lend themselves to that kind of information consumption. My reasoning was (and is) that I would be benefiting people by making subscription by email the number one option for people visiting my site.
While I felt that I could achieve my aims by tweaking the existing design, I knew that spending more money on something that did not represent where I wanted the site to ultimately be was rather pointless. Better that I spend a little more money and go all the way with my vision.
Initial Design Inspiration
I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted the site to look like before any real work started. If I could pinpoint the exact moment at which my inspiration was first sparked, it would have been when the new Think Traffic design was launched back in May 2012. I was blown away by simple structure and bold use of color.
I soon discovered that the design was the brainchild of Chase Reeves, interviewed here by Corbett Barr:
Set aside 45 minutes to watch that video – the guy’s a complete dude.
Chase went on to re-design Paid to Exist and Nerd Fitness, both of which look awesome. While I wanted the new Leaving Work Behind design to be unique, I also knew that I wanted to use Chase’s designs as inspiration for my own.
In Search of a Designer
I knew that I wouldn’t be able to create the design alone. While I had gotten by with customizing the fantastic WooThemes Canvas framework for the original design, I knew that the look I was going for would be beyond my modest abilities.
There was a period of weeks after deciding that I wanted a new design where nothing tangible happened. The truth is this: I was having a nightmare finding someone to help me.
At first I thought I could create a new design in conjunction with the chap I had used on the old design, but he was unavailable. I even reached out to Chase, but he was also unavailable – busy working on Fizzle.
Finally, I sent emails out to a handful of web design firms that I liked the look of (I didn’t find many to be honest). Some didn’t get back to me, some came back with outrageous quotes ($30k being the most laughable), and just one gave me a price that I could bear: $3,000. We were all set to go until he disappeared. I didn’t receive a response to a simple email asking for confirmation of the scope of works and that was that.
To be honest, I now see it as a blessing in disguise – I wasn’t totally sold on the guy’s portfolio and was only really going with him on the basis that I felt I had no other options. It’s funny that what seems like a problem at the time can in fact be preventing an undesirable outcome.
It was then that my previous experience with 99designs came to mind. I had used the service to get my logo designed back in 2012 – a logo that I was (and still am) delighted with:
99designs gets a bad rap in certain circles for “commodotizing” creative work, and while I do understand that argument, I come from the perspective that we live in a capitalist society, and 99designs is capitalism at its purest: supply and demand.
With that in mind and having failed to hire someone independently, I decided to move forward with 99designs.
The First Design Phase
With moral dilemmas put to one side, I set out to get my hands on a visual representation of the new Leaving Work Behind design.
This was arguably the most vital stage of development – the stage of true creation (as opposed to the translation that was the coding stage).
You can find the full brief I submitted here. As you can see, I went into a lot of detail, referencing four of Chase’s designs: Nerd Fitness, Think Traffic, Paid to Exist and Fizzle.
I received over 40 designs. Here’s a selection of the contenders:
As you can see, the offerings were somewhat mixed in quality. The winning design was actually a last-minute submission. Before it came through, I was strongly considering canceling the competition (as you can get a full refund if you don’t proceed to final stage). Thank God for that final submission!
You can find the winning design here, by a chap called Mithum. As you can see, it is largely the same as the final product.
If you plan to use 99designs I have three pieces of advice to give you:
- You’ll only get out of it what you put in. Be prepared to give a lot of specific feedback and work closely with the designers to get something that matches your vision. If you just sit back and hope for the best, you probably won’t end up happy.
- Be ready to repeat yourself. Many designers seemingly completely ignore the brief and go off on their own creative jaunts. This can be a good thing (if they think up something really cool that you never had in mind), but more often than not it aint so good (e.g. when a designer ignores a vital element of your design). You’ll need to repeat elements of your brief, perhaps multiple times, in order to get what you want.
- You have to dig deep to find the diamond in the rough. Both times I have used 99designs, there has really only been one design that I’ve loved. But it only takes one. Be prepared to dig deep to find that that one design you’ll love.
Once I had selected a winner and the competition had closed, a Photoshop file of the design was emailed to me and I made the payment: £599 (just under $1,000). I was very happy with what I had for that price.
The Second Design Phase
I had my design – now I just needed to make it real. That’s where I turned to my most trusted contractor: Tito Pandu Brahmanto.
I first spoke with Tito when I was just getting my feet wet in the world of WordPress plugin development. I had developed a very basic WordPress plugin that enabled you to embed pre-formatted tweets within links – like the Click to Tweet service. He helped me develop that plugin into something far more sophisticated, and since then we have worked together on other WordPress plugins such as Evergreen Post Tweeter and Advanced Comments Moderation (with more to come in the future!).
It seemed that no matter what challenge I threw at Tito, he was up for it. And if he didn’t know how to do something, he’d figure it out. I knew he was the guy to help me set up Leaving Work Behind.
I sent the Photoshop file to him and asked him to create it as a website for me, based upon the Genesis framework by StudioPress. I chose Genesis because it is:
- widely acknowledged as one of the best WordPress theme frameworks available, and
- optimized to run on Synthesis, which Leaving Work Behind is hosted on.
Over the course of a few weeks (and with a number of iterative improvements), the design took shape. To give you an idea of how in-depth this process was, here’s an example of just part of one email exchange between Tito and I:
Yeah – it got pretty fiddly. And yes, I am a perfectionist and an absolute nightmare to deal with and Tito should have a medal for putting up with me. But when it came to the finished product, I wanted nothing short of the crystal clear image I had in my head.
If you’re interested in working with Tito then you can email him: tito@pandubrahmanto.com. I have nothing but good things to say about him and his work.
Launch Day
Once everything was in place, we were ready to push the button. On the afternoon of Monday, 4th November 2013, Tito put Leaving Work Behind into maintenance mode. It stayed that way for around three hours while we worked together to ensure that everything was as it should be.
There were a number of snagging issues that needed to be taken care of and I didn’t want to go live until I was sure that everything was in order. You’d be amazed at all the little things that come to light when the crunch time comes – all the little things you hadn’t noticed before that suddenly become vital issues that must be fixed.
What I haven’t mentioned in this post is the design of the new email autoresponder, manifesto and the community forums and how they tied in with the creation of the website design. All three of those topics deserve posts of their own, and they will get them in the coming weeks!
With that said, once all of the snagging issues were resolved I had Tito take the site live. I published the re-launch annoucement post, sent my subscribers an email, sat back and took a deep breath. By this point it was about 4pm and I had plans for the evening, so I only had an hour or two to make sure that everything was working okay.
Additional snagging issues presented themselves within those first few minutes, but Tito was quick to zap them. Soon enough, the smoke cleared and the comments started rolling in – of which all but one were positive. In fact, many were effusive in their praise of the new design. Mithum and Tito had done a truly awesome job.
Dissecting the Design
A lot of thought went into the design (to put it mildly).
I have already said that I was heavily influenced by Chase Reeves’ work, but at the same time I wanted to create something unique. Most importantly, I wanted to create something that reflected the Leaving Work Behind brand effectively and put email subscriptions front and center as the main action that I wanted readers to take.
For me, the design represents the coming-together of 2 1/2 years of blogging experience. At this point, there is nothing I would change.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at the main elements of the design and the thinking behind each one.
The Color Scheme
One thing I knew that I wanted in the new design was color. I always felt that the previous design was a little drab and gray, and I saw the new design as an opportunity to implement a major change on that front.
However, I didn’t want to go overboard with color. In fact, I only wanted to use two “accent” colors: one (used relatively liberally) to highlight important areas and another (used sparingly) to highlight specific calls to action. Mithum did a great job in combining blues and greens to this effect:
To get a better idea of the purpose of my color scheme, check out this list of areas where green is used on the home page:
- The feature box signup button
- The “Learn More” button in the sidebar About widget
- The footer signup button
- The “Learn More” button in the footer
Basically, greens enables just two outcomes:
- Signing up to the email list
- Visiting the About page (which contains another green signup button)
I wanted the rest of the design to remain relatively colorless by comparison: I felt this would lead readers’ eyes to all the right places.
The Header and Feature Box
I knew that I wanted to keep the existing Leaving Work Behind logo (originally inspired by Live Your Legend), but not in its existing guise.
Why? Because the previous design had a pretty enormous header which took up a lot of screen real estate. I knew that I wanted my first email subscription option to be well “above the fold,” which meant that the header would need to be smaller.
With that in mind, I chose to go with a Think Traffic-style header layout, with the logo to the left and the main navigation links to the right. Despite going with a “compressed” header, I was able to the Leaving Work Behind logo, the birds motif (which I really like as a symbol of freedom) and the tagline without any of it looking crowded.
What was now missing from the previous header was the world map, which I really liked as a symbol of location independence (incidentally, I was originally inspired to include this by Chris Guillebeau’s site). Fortunately, incorporating the world map within the feature box worked perfectly. The bold headline, blurb and big manifesto eBook cover finished off the “above the fold” view on the homepage nicely – in fact, you wouldn’t think the site is a blog at first glance.
The feature box is only present on the home page – on all other pages the visitor sees just the header. To compensate for the loss of the feature box, a mini feature box is included within the sidebar:
My thinking behind this is simple: if someone goes directly to a content page, their primary goal is probably read to the content. So I make it easy for them. If on the other hand they want to explore, the first place they’ll probably go is the home page, which is where they get hit with the big feature box.
The Content Area
When it came to the content, I didn’t want to do anything too drastic, otherwise I’d have to go back into the archives and do a lot of editing to get things to fit into the new design. Because of that, the content area is probably the least-changed part of the design.
Instead of going for a major overhaul, I decided to go with small tweaks and graphical touches, such as the headlines:
My favorite new touch in the content area is probably the horizontal share bar, decorated with the LWB birds motif:
I also made the decision to add the “Leave a Reply” comments box above the existing comments (rather than below). I believe this makes far more sense in terms of usability (i.e. if someone wants to leave a comment they don’t have to scroll to the very bottom of the page).
The Sidebar
I am a big fan of relatively minimalistic sidebars, so as to not overwhelm visitors, and I have kept that in mind with the new design. The sidebar contains just a handful of widgets (some of which appear or disappear depending upon which page you are on):
- An About box
- An email list signup box
- Popular posts (five posts)
- A button linking to my Successful Freelance Writing Online course
- A button linking to my Resources page
- A search box
That’s it! No superfluous widgets, no adverts. The only thing I might consider adding in the future is a social media widget so that people can join my Facebook and Twitter channels, but to be honest, I am loath to detract attention from my main intention (to get people to sign up via email).
The Footer
The footer was all but non existent in the previous design. In fact, it was just a bar with some copyright text:
I wanted to create something more substantial in the new design. Most importantly, I wanted a final reminder to sign up to the email list. Beyond that, I thought that a small About section as well as extended navigation links would work nicely.
There’s nothing particularly sophisticated about the footer – the one thing I would say is that I took this opportunity to include links that aren’t otherwise available in the header: namely Income Reports and Archives. Although these links would ideally be in the top navigation, that would make things rather cluttered and potentially overwhelming. Including them in the footer is the compromise I came to.
The End Product
I’ve said on more that one occasion in this post that my main aim was (and is) to get people to subscribe (more information as to why will be divulged in a future post). I feel that the design does this well, which means that (in my eyes) it is a success.
And although it has only been three days, the numbers tell a positive story so far: email list subscription rates have approximately doubled since the launch. It’ll be interesting to see how these fare over a longer (and more statistically reliable) length of time. My instinct tells me that conversion rates will remain higher in the long haul.
However, most importantly, this new design offers a rock solid platform upon which I can build. Although the previous design did a decent job of looking okay, it didn’t really do a good job of clearly communicating my message. I feel that the new design does. As soon as you hit the home page, take in the imagery and read the feature box blurb, you have a very good idea of how the site can help you (or at least, how I intend for it to help you).
That, arguably more than anything else, is the number one thing I wanted to achieve – even if I didn’t realize it until now.
What Do You Think?
Now we’ve explored the design in detail and I’ve shared my thinking behind it, I’d love to get your thoughts. Do you like or dislike the design? Love or hate it? What specific parts of the design are you keen on or put off by? Please share your comments with us in the comments section below!
Vukasin says
As I already said- WOW! I have 10+ years work experience in designing and I’m still not able to create something like this. Tito is GOD!
However, I checked your contest on 99 Designs just few hours before it was ended and I noticed that there are lot of nice designs. I was really curious to see what you are going to pick.
I also like the second one you embed in this post. It gives me feel of security and trust.
I really like your blog, keep with good work Tom! 🙂
Tom Ewer says
Thank you Vukasin, appreciate all your support 🙂
Kirsty Stuart says
Well, the proof is in the pudding Tom – if your aim is to get more email subscribers and those rates have doubled since the re-launch then I’d call that a resounding success! I love the new design. Yes, because it looks pretty but also because it’s super-intuitive. (I also really liked the second design example you showed though!)
Will be delving into the forums in due course. I’m sure they’ll be a helpful and fun place to hang out.
Tom Ewer says
So far so good 🙂 Thanks Kirsty!
Jon Patrick says
Great job Tom, and I love it. Agree with Vukasin, I really liked that 2nd design above as well.
You have an eye for it, something most of us don’t. Like art, I can appreciate it afterwards, but could not begin to lay it out for someone to create. I need samples, examples and ideas I pull in. In my (in)capable hands, my sites can look like the frankenstein they are!
Fabulous!
JoDavies says
I like the new design and I love the colors! It really does put the ‘focus’ of the site right in front, where it should be!
I love how you gave a breakdown of your inspirations and what drove you to pick this or that, and who doesn’t LOVE a good Chase & Corbett interview!? I also love the forum (but you have figured that out by now ; )
Thanks for the breakdown, enjoyed reading about the journey!
Tom Ewer says
And I’m loving that you love the forum Jo! I hope we can attract some more members who are as vocal as you 🙂
Tom Ewer says
Thanks Jon! To be honest, I really struggle with it. I need someone to create something awesome in order for me to be able to say that I like it 🙂
Some of the things that Mithum did with the design, I could’ve never envisaged. It’s like I had a blurry version of what I wanted in my head, and he made it crystal clear. Kudos to the designer, not me!
Joe Mobley says
Good work Tom. Not only with the “new” site but also the detail of this post. I know it has been a great help to many.
All the best,
Joe Mobley
Tom Ewer says
Thanks Joe! Glad you appreciate it 🙂
Ryan says
Tom,
The site looks great! You’ve got me wanting to do an overhaul of my own! This is, by far, the best post on the process of a site design that I’ve read online. Thanks for your honesty and transparency. Keep doing what you’re doing!
Tom Ewer says
Thanks for the positive feedback Ryan!
Iain says
Chase Reeves does some great stuff so I’m not surprised you took some pointers from him.
I love the new design. It’s simple and directs people to where you want them to go. I’ve always liked simple designs.
I’ve always found that the more stuff there is to do on a page the less action people take. Too many decisions sort of idea.
Fantastic work man.
Tom Ewer says
Thank you Iain; really appreciate it 🙂
James Tiberius says
Wow, Tom! The site redesign looks great! I’m really looking forward to using the new forums you added. It should be really helpful (not to mention fun!) to discuss things with others on the same path. Thanks for setting that up! I can’t wait to see how this new design pans out for you.
Tom Ewer says
It’s my pleasure James — look forward to speaking with you on the forums!
Hrvoje says
The layout is cut on the left and right side when i look at it in 1920*1080 res.. so tell your designer and dev. to fix that as it doesn’t look good. also on the right side he cut out the background color and you only see white space..
other than that looks good
H
Tom Ewer says
Hey Hrvoje,
Thanks for the feedback. Would you mind sending me a couple of screenshots that I can send to my developer? tom@leavingworkbehind.com
Thanks!
Tom
Alex says
Tom, I’ll be honest. I was “so-so” about the new design – but I love your content. I enjoy reading your posts and have never had any issues up until now.
I was really really disappointed to see you had decided to use 99 designs. As a designer, I find the site to be a terrible way to source design work. So many things wrong with the process – and more than I’d care to go in to detail over here.
Ultimately it was a shame that you felt like you hadn’t been able to find a designer – since there’s truly an abundance of designers out there (everyone and their cat is a designer these days, sadly). And had you put a call out on your blog for designers (maybe you did and i didn’t notice) then you might have had more success finding someone.
Sorry that my first comment on your blog has to be a negative one, since you’ve brought a great deal of interesting content to me in the past, but this was the first post where I felt compelled enough, and disappointed enough in your process to really say something.
Spec work and design competitions are something I really detest, so to see someone I respect promoting it, is incredibly frustrating.
Tom Ewer says
Hey Alex,
No problem — I appreciate the honest feedback.
First of all, would you mind telling me what you don’t like about the new design? I would love to get feedback from a detractor’s perspective; that would be really helpful.
Secondly, I know where you’re coming from regarding 99designs and I am fully aware that a lot of designers aren’t fans. In response I have a few things to say:
I spent a lot of time looking around the web and put calls out on Facebook and Twitter for designers and couldn’t find anyone suitable. One could argue that the design community let me down.
Despite the negativity some people direct at 99designs, I am delighted with the end product — one cannot really argue with the fact that using the service resulted in a positive outcome for me.
I’m likely to work with my designer again on a one-to-one basis, meaning he pockets all the pay on future work and will benefit from the me promoting his work on this site.
Having thought about this further, I’ve decided that I have no problem with 99designs whatsoever. I think it’s a great way for up-and-coming designers to get their feet in the door and start putting a portfolio together. From the platform they establish through 99designs they can then go onto more lucrative work (i.e. word of mouth referrals, etc). It reminds me of what I did when I was starting out (although I didn’t work for the likes of Elance etc.
I’d love to know more specifically about what you don’t like about 99designs et al.
Cheers,
Tom
Alex says
Thanks for the reply Tom – sorry it took me a minute to get back to you.
I appreciate you found what you were looking for with 99 designs. it’s not my thing, but you seem satisfied, so there’s not much I can say to persuade you otherwise. Plus that’s not really my thing – harping on etc.
Feedback on the site:
I’ll try and bullet-point this if I can, this is often what I do when people ask me for feedback on other sites or their work:
– I’ve never been a fan of the logo. it looks (or is very similar to) a free font, which always feels a bit tacky to me. Granted to any non-designer, this may not be an issue.
– On article pages your header doesn’t stretch full-width, and there’s a sliver of white at the right hand side, which should have been easy to fix, or fade-out like the main background on the homepage.
– I think more space could have been given to the article, and i think some of the content feels “packed in” without room to breathe. I’m a big fan of white-space, and less borders etc.
I think overall, I just felt that it wasn’t a “wow” sort of moment – there are lots of nice things about the design, and plenty ticks in my book – responsiveness, the text size is good, the links are consistent, as are most titles, and things like line-height is spot-on, but I guess I just felt a bit deflated that I didn’t look at it and think “oh man, that’s AMAZING!” haha
Tom Ewer says
Hey Alex,
I’ve actually taken steps to resolve the second and third issues you mention. The white “sliver” is gone and the background are now faded out. Plus, I’ve added lots more whitespace around the content. What do you think?
Cheers,
Tom
Alex says
Hey Tom – I’m still seeing the old images, but that could be a cache thing – I’d have widened the column for text, to add the white-space, but it’s definitely fine for reading.
A thought crossed my mind – how many of your readers view your content through an RSS reader – quite often I read your content through “Netvibes” since it aggregates all my blog feeds – I don’t jump onto the site all that often, since I get the whole article in my feed – but I wondered how many other do the same, and how relevant this is these days.
There is certainly lots of talk about content being king – and the internet of things. how long before a site’s design is irrelevant (or purely function over form) and everyone just consumes content on their preferred medium? I doubt it’s all that far off.
Tom Ewer says
Hi Alex,
You make a great point and I think that we would do well to think as you do.
It’s funny — I’ve worked on two designs recently: this one (which I had developed for me) and my new healthyenough.net design (which I made from scratch). Guess which one I prefer? The one that places the absolute emphasis on the content and provides a completely clean reading experience.
Whether this is best for traffic, conversions and other commercial considerations is another question, but I for one feel more and more inclined to strip design back and focus on what is most important: the content.
Cheers,
Tom
Alex says
Also the header image I refer to (unchanged) is this one – http://www.leavingworkbehind.com/wp-content/themes/genesis-lwb/images/bg-header-up.jpg
Filipe says
Hey Tom!
This blog post is right down my alley.
First of all: First impression is great and I feel the site has improved. I love the blue color accents.
If I may, I would like to suggest some tiny details:
– Your logo is in brown and it would be great to see brown accents is some parts of the web design. Maybe placing the post titles in brown or the “post comment” button in brown. Just an idea to fine tune your color scheme.
– Your logo has a distinctive design and it’s a shame that wasn’t used in the book cover. BTW is your logo a registered trademark ® already? If not I would suggest register it.
– I noticed you used several different typefaces in your design. As a rule, please try to stick with 2/3 max (see: http://screencast.com/t/0D1xdf2c).
– Try to make header and footer to extend and use 100% of browser width (see: http://screencast.com/t/kf1mNI7WAz)
There are few other tiny details but that’s about it.
By the way, can you share the total cost of the project?
All the best,
Tom Ewer says
Hey Felipe,
I should have had you look over the site before I launched 😉
I’ve thought about trademarking, but then I’ve thought that there’s no real gain from me going down that route at this stage. It’s not like I’m going to sue someone if they rip off my logo, and it’s highly unlikely that them doing so would actually have a negative impact on my business. When it comes to blogging, people will always rip you off — fortunately, those people are almost always of no consequence.
What’s the thinking behind your fonts suggestion?
It’s impossible to make the header/footer stretch unless I create absolutely enormous images, which isn’t good for load speed. I’m working on a compromise — fading out the left/right margins to the gray background color.
The design work was ~$1,000 and the coding work was ~$300.
Cheers,
Tom
Filipe says
Hey Tom!
– For the fonts, I’ll change the body and H2 fonts so they match the post title and post date. Also I would suggest change the title color to brown to match your logo: This can be achievable just to change the CSS code on your website. See: http://screencast.com/t/rozcbvl3rR
– For the footer/header, I like your compromise. You can fade not to grey but to a solid color (which can stretch). Have Tito to look into it.
– Good price on the coding. I’ll save Tito contacts if you don’t mind. 🙂
– I understand your perspective on the trademarking, but I think you have earned your place and have built some reputation, so I suggest you give some thought about it, seriously. It’s $325 If I’m not mistaken and you can register online – http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/
Take care,
Tom Ewer says
Hey Felipe,
For $325 I think I’ll pass 😉
Thanks for the tips though, appreciate it!
Cheers,
Tom
Jim says
I was wondering in your content area, your share bar, is that a widget?
Tom Ewer says
It’s a WordPress plugin Jim: http://wordpress.org/plugins/digg-digg/ 🙂
Jeff Rose, CFP® (@jjeffrose) says
It’s so funny reading this because I felt like I was reading a blog post that I want to write about the site redesign I just launched. Took me over 3 months, working with one designer and one awesome coder to finally get it how I wanted. In working with them I was always giving them examples of Chase’s work as my inspiration, too. 🙂
Of course now that’s launched I want to make more tweaks. It never ends!
Tom Ewer says
I know, tell me about it! I enjoy the tweaks though — creating a whole new design is a hell of task, but messing around with the finished product is fun 🙂
Nuno says
Hi Tom, do you use Westhost for hosting your site or Synthesis? I think you writed a blog post saying that you use westhost? Did you change your hosting provider?
Tom Ewer says
See my other comment 😉
WonderfulWanderings says
Hey Tom,
I’ve been following for a while as well now and I’m afraid I’m not that excited about the new look, but it’s mostly a purely subjective ‘I think it’s less pretty’ kind of less excited.
1. I don’t like the top navigation, which seems to be pushed a bit in that right corner, as if there wasn’t enough space left.
2. I do like the feature on the homepage, but feel it could’ve been a bit smaller. I don’t like it if I get to a site and have to scroll down before I see anything that could be os use to me.
3. I just liked the old color scheme better, in general, but I do like the green pop-outs.
4. I also like the way you really focused on the e-mail subscription. I need to do that more on my own site and on the new site I’ll be starting soon.
5. I love the birds, but that might be because I have birds on my own blog as well:p
6. I’m happy you kept the logo. I really like it. I just feel it’s not being done justice because of the ‘not high’ header.
Like I said, mainly purely subjective things.
If I stumble upon something unpracticle I’ll let you know:)
Tom Ewer says
Thanks for the feedback Sofie, I appreciate it! What with this and Healthy Enough, it seems like our design tastes don’t match 😉
Paula / Afford Anything says
Wow, I’m glad that I found this post. I’ve been putting together ideas for a large site redesign — I’ve spent the last 6-8 months taking screenshots of my favorite design elements of various webpages and blogs. In January, I’ll be ready to “pull the trigger,” hire a designer and a coder, and make this a reality. Thank you so much for sharing, in such detail, how you were able to put together this design. (And I also think Chase Reeves is amazing, especially with the work he did on Nerd Fitness).
Tom Ewer says
My pleasure Paula! Glad we’re agreed on Chase 🙂