Reviving Elite By Design Version 1
- July 12th, 2008
- COMMENTS 7
Well everyone, it’s official : Elite By Design has been an up and running blog for over 8 months now as we roll into July 12th. Yep, we’re 2/3 of the way through our first year. It’s absolutely incredible how far this blog has come since then - and how much further it is going to go.
Over the last couple of weeks, I have been browsing through some old concepts I had in the works back in January, February, and a little bit of March, when I stumbled across the original design for Elite By Design. All I could say was “wow.” It seems like forever ago that my website looked like this, and that my design skills were…well…not quite as good ;). However, as I stared at this design for a little while, I started to remember how much positive feedback I had received, and how well my first few readers took to this design. So I got to thinking, how can I revive this design to inspire a whole new generation of readers? Take a look:
Anybody recognize this old mess?
Well, if you’ve been an Elite By Design follower for 6 months or so, you probably should. Like I mentioned, this was the first design that was sported on this site. Hopefully the screen capture gives you a general idea of how the blog looked.
Today, I am announcing that I will be reviving Elite By Design Version 1. I still have a long ways to go with this design but I wanted to give you all a really quick preview of what things are going to be looking like. I’m staying true to v.1’s content organization and base structure, however, things will look a lot sharper, a lot cleaner, and a lot more professional. Here’s what I have so far - you’ll notice that I’ve only started working on the header and body, not the sidebar or footer yet. But hopefully you can get a feel for what things will be like.
After I finish this design, I hope to post it up on Elite By Design for everyone to critique and comment on before we get this baby coded. The final theme will go up for sale at Elite Theme as soon as development is completed (I hope). So let me know what you think and any features you would like to see implemented into this design.
Thanks everyone for an incredible eight months of Elite blogging - here’s to eight more!
Hi Brian
I have noticed a trend with my personal tastes that are ‘back to basics’! I’m bored with the smoothgalleries and the javascript this and that!
My personal preference is for sites like psdtut’s/photoshopstar/ or a real b2b but looks great dailywp, these have simple layout’s nothing fancy or complicated just easy to read and understand layout’s, easy nav no fancy stuff and bloody good content!
Good luck with the re re re design and I look forward to a a copy when it goes on sale
Hey… I’m a fan of anything “elite,” LOL, so I say go for it! Nothing better than getting to revisit and refresh an old favorite.
I have to say, I sure hope you’re stickin’ with that lighter background for the post content area. While I like this design, reading more than a few sentences in your post makes it a little rough on the eyes. Luckily, I do have my feed reader to bypass the dark.
Also, I totally remember that first theme… you’ve come a long way, baby.
Your blog has definitely come on in leaps and bounds. The earlier look & feel was cool, but I personally really like the current dark design. Not bad for an 8 month evolutionary process, it is going to be interesting looking back in a couple of years time though!
Brian, if you choose to redesign your blog, here are my suggestions:
Challenge yourself, to make the new design unique. Unique in the sense that it doesn’t look like a templated site that’s being used by everyone else. I feel web design nowadays is full of sameness. Sometimes I miss the good old 90s “designers” websites. As bad as they were in terms of usability, accessibility, they had a personality. Admittedly, making a blog site to have a unique personality these days is rather difficult imo. You have the same content elements to play with, as thousands of other sites out there(title, content, comments, links, ads etc). Even when someone comes up with a genuinely unique design, then it gets copied/overused by others in no time.
That being said, I don’t want to see you redesigning this site. Why? because the current site works for what it’s intended for. Also a redesign will add very little value as far as readership goes. For a blog site, visual design has a very high diminishing return. You may whoa people the first couple times they come to this site, that’s about it. Also keep in mind a lot people read blog via a RSS reader.
What I’d like to see is you focus more on the content. If content is good, people will come. Many popular blogs i read daily almost have no design elements at all. I feel you’ve been focusing a bit too much on self-promotion, than design content in recent months. You’re a good designer, and you don’t need to prove yourself in that aspect. Rather, focus on cranking out well paced, well thought out content. That’s what will ultimately make your blog successful, instead of eye-candy. Sincerely.
just my $0.02.
@Roger - Thanks a lot for the kind words. I am starting to agree with your statement about simple being back in. I love PSDTuts and their franchise they have going - in terms of design and content. While this design won’t be going up on elitebydesign.com, I will be selling it and I think we can reach a large market with our simplicity and ease of use.
@E. Nicole - Thanks! I think this will be a nice refresh to our Elite line. Appreciate the comment!
@Katy - Wow, you sure have been following EBD for a long time to still remember v.1 design! That’s amazing. As for the light and dark - we’ll stick with light on this design, but of course we’ll have a couple of color options. As for reading on EBD.com, I tried my best to stick with the dark layout but keep things readable. I worked my hardest to reduce too much contrast and other minute things. Sorry about that!
@Jacques - Thanks very much. I am a big fan of the dark design I have now, but who knows what this site will look like a year down the road. Thanks for keeping up with EBD and the comments!
@JY - Wow, incredible comment. Let me first say that this revisit into v.1 will not be going up on this site. It will be strictly for sale - so no worries there. In terms of uniqueness - trust me I’m trying! You pretty much nailed it on the head in saying how hard it can be when thousands, or even millions of websites out there are all trying to do original things with the same content.
I appreciate your honesty with me in talking about the need to focus on content. I agree. Thanks for the encouraging words - it’s things like this that give me more drive and more endurance to keep writing articles and blogging. So thank you and I look forward to seeing you around on EBD in the future
oops i misread about the intent of the redesign. carry on!