Another month, another redesign. I think this all stems from the fact that I have never really been 100% happy with my website.

So, it is back to basics. With an update of WordPress comes their default theme, so I can concentrate on the content before I work on a custom design.

It’s all about the content

From day one, I have really used this site as a dumping ground, posting anything on here, not really thinking about the audience and so for this new era, I want to focus the content and deliver something of use (hopefully) to the people reading it.

Get out the statistics

I had never really looked into the popular sections of the site, so I dug out the page visits over the last few years, to see which elements were the most visited; here they are:

• /2010/01/19/dribbble-invite-giveaway/
• /2009/04/28/six-high-resolution-cloud-images/
• /projects/
• /2009/10/16/the-kitchen-sink-of-html/
• /2009/07/30/august-2009-wallpaper/
• /about/
• /2009/06/25/july-2009-wallpaper/
• /category/wallpaper/
• /2009/02/06/the-h1-debate/
• /2009/05/28/june-2009-wallpaper/
• /2009/10/13/good-design-is-invisible/
• /2009/04/24/london-2012-coin-design-competition/
• /2010/03/19/css3-multiple-backgrounds/
• /2009/08/31/september-2009-wallpaper/
• /2009/07/17/creativity/
• /category/downloads/
• /contact/
• /2010/01/10/type-the-secret-history-of-letters/
• /2010/02/22/should-the-grid-be-visible/
• /2009/11/15/thinking-with-type/
• /category/design/
• /2009/10/29/november-2009-wallpaper/
• /2009/01/19/if-you-make-everything-bold-nothing-is-bold/
• /2009/08/14/background-alignment-bug-fix/
• /2009/12/04/december-2009-wallpaper/
• /category/freebies/
• /2009/07/01/the-one-song-sketch/
• /2009/01/11/how-i-got-into-web-design/
• /2009/04/22/five-simple-steps/
• /2009/01/12/design-work-on-footytweets/

So, what can I learn from this:

1. Giving away free stuff interests people and drives an audience to your site
2. The ‘about’ page is very important
3. Design-centric posts are most popular

So having analysed this, I want to expand a section with HTML/CSS code snippets, further develop my profile on the site, and spend time writing some posts on design, something I have always wanted to do more of.

Timescale?

My first mistake would be to set a limit of this. The only times I have pushed the development of this site forward is during several hours at the weekends (or on a bank holiday like today). I don’t want to rush it, because the chances are that I haven’t thought about it enough, and it’ll mean I want to redesign it again too quickly, so for now, I will concentrate on writing more, and will slowly develop the plans for the site in the next few months.

The many redesigns are usually due to me getting bored with the site. My skills and design knowledge have improved and a personal brand redesign along the way have changed the look also.

Part of the problem comes with a lack of purpose for the site. Although a designer I don’t have much of a portfolio on the website – mainly because I am currently in full-time employment and do not show any work I do during office hours. The site also isn’t a promotional tool either so it only exists to be a place to blog and host experiments.

So I again rethink the purpose of the site, and after recent analysis reports being constructed by @RobHawkes I have been rethinking what I want to do with the site:

• Publish experiments
• Indepth research
• Front-end focused
• Collate social profile (last.fm, twitter, dribbble, delicious)
• Frequent blogging

This will no doubt come with a new website design, and i’m also thinking about moving from WordPress to a custom CMS. Along with all the hacking i’ve heard about recently to WordPress blogs I have always had a keen interest in optimisation and speed.

Watch this space.

After a long period of inactivity, due to a new job, and other things the site has sat a little dorment. I thought it was time for a change, and after many, many revisions I decided to finally design something. So, after a few hours of work this weekend – here it is.

I’m hoping to tidy a few things up over the next week, and I will follow that up with a more indepth blog on the designs that didn’t make it.

If you do notice something weird, feel free to post a comment. It hasn’t been browser tested, but bear in mind that things may look a little funky for the next few days.

In doing the redesign, the style changed at many stages, although most never made it past a quick Photoshop mockup. I knew I wanted a change, as I felt my style evolved, and the previous incarnation was no longer suited.

I had been working on this current style on-and-off for the past month or so, and I thought I had nailed the look and I eagerly began converting it to XHTML/CSS.

Always Finalise the Design Before Coding

Now at this point, if your client asks for changes this late in the stage, you ask yourself why the designs were signed off in the first place. But I was one of those clients!

The change of look came about after watching graphic designs videos on YouTube late one night. Afterwards, I was sketching s few logos, playing around with my initials and left it at that. the following day, I has only planned to make some PhotoShop versions of thr sketches for Flickr, but that soon turned into a major brand redesign. I had some positive feedback decided to bite the bullet and change my ‘brand’.

Never Rebrand One Week Before Launch

My old logo was Georgia based, and the site redesign focused on serif headings with additional touches of Adobe Caslon Pro. The new logo wasn’t going to match with the site. I had a dilemma.

Cue a week of frantic typographic redesigning and colour scheme changes; gone is the light brown, red and green in comes red, white and black.

The Results

I hope you like the redesign, but please bear in mind that the site is not 100% finished, and there are plans to add more in the coming weeks and months.