Alpha Blog DesignsThe specialist in custom blog designs

One might debate whether doing free work for a family member actually counts as ‘client’ work. However, I can’t really imagine the look on my wife’s face if I asked her to pay for a custom blog redesign!

My wife has been writing on Dietriffic.com for almost a year. As a professional, registered dietitian, she is obliged to produce accurate, and useful advice to her readers based on scientific evidence. So her site is a great resource for people looking for dietary advice, help with weight loss.

The Challenge

The primary challenge was to come up with something fresh and inviting. Something which would make the blog stand out from the crowd, and give the right impression of the purpose of the site. The decision to redesign, was to coincide with Melanie’s desire to write more articles focused on people with busy lives, and how to eat well inspite of the lack of time.

The Layout

Initially, we debated over whether or not to go for a ‘magazine’ style layout, with the possibility of Melanie creating videos in the future. However, after careful consideration, and my belief that ‘magazine’ style themes are greatly overrated, and are used far too extensively, I decided to go for a traditional blog layout.The layout I finally came up with, was actually the second I created. The first was far too ‘bloggy’, and possessed no differing features or styling, and so I ditched it.

I sat down again, and worked on something else, coming up with the solid coloured right sidebar, post/comment meta to the left of the content, and a colourful, fresh image in the header, and a tabbed navigation menu. The strange thing is, the initial design was far less complex, and it took me far longer. Sometimes you get such a vivid complete picture in your mind, that it takes no time to create it.

Colours

Just before the redesign, I had come across a site (I forget what site it is now, and I tried to find it, but without any luck) which used an extremely fresh, and almost edible shade of pink, green, and blue against white, and when I sat down to create the new Dietriffic design, those colours came back into my mind. So I went back to the site, took a screenshot, and used very similar shades.

Logo

With the site now also focusing on how busy people can make time to eat well (as well as continuing with practical advice for everyone), I came up with the tag line, “Healthy eating for busy people”. With that in mind, I spent a few days mulling over a few different ideas I had for a logo, and sketching them in various ways, and although I came up with a few nice ideas, I found it difficult to execute them.

The alternative was a text based logo. I wanted something fairly rounded, yet, with character. I also wanted it to have an oblique look, to give the look of action, forward, and positivity. After going through some fonts, I came across the excellent Fertigo. However, it doesn’t have an oblique (or italic) version. So I played about with it a little myself, and came up with my own version.

Little details

• Absolutely no gradients or shiny icons
• Author comment highlighting
• Separated trackbacks and comments
• Space allocated of 125px ads
• A BMI (Body Mass Index) Calculator plugin (not uploaded as yet)

Conclusion

Primary Positive - Objective achieved.

Primary Negative - Not sure whether the logo is as effective as it could be.

I’m really pleased with the overall outcome of this redesign. By-in-large I achieved what I set out to do; create a really fresh look, and this was further verified by some of the responses:

“Excellent design by Armen. He’s certainly becoming the accomplished WP designer these days, and I’m sure there’ll be plenty of work coming up for him.” David Airey

“I happen to love this new design, its fresh, clean and powerful…it feels good just being on the site. Sort of like a cleansing feeling.” Israel (Fat Man Unleashed)

“I like the design a lot! The layout, color and general theme of the site matches your topic and its very refreshing.” Davey Boyd

Of course, these are the comments anyone looks for, and I hope that in the future, other projects will be met with a similar response.

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