Notes On This Redesign

As you can see, I have launched yet another redesign of this blog. It seems I get the redesign itch about every six months.  I find it to be a fun exercise and a great way to push forward my skills as a designer.

Here is a rundown of the objectives I set out to achieve in the redesign of May 2010:

Improve legibility, make articles more “inviting”

The previous design was an exploration of a dark approach. This time, I returned to a light background with a high-contrast color scheme. This, along with improved typography (thanks to Typekit) makes for a more comfortable reading experience.

I’m experimenting with a unique approach to links and hover states. As you hover over a group of links (a series of articles, categories list, footer links) the group dims as the individual hovered link color stays intact. The idea is to encourage movement throughout the site and assist the user in zeroing in on a path.

Get Even More Personalized

After all, it is my personal blog.  So I’ve gone back to having my photo included on the site, this time blending it in with the background / texture of the site.

I also wanted to make my company logos more apparent than they were in the previous design.  They weren’t very visible – especially on Windows browsers – in the dark design.  This version helps them have a real presence, which hopefully serves to make the distinction that this is my personal blog, the other two sites represent my businesses.

Lastly, I have introduced contact forms, which were sorely missing from the previous design.  There’s a small one in the footer of every page, plus a new Contact page.  I want to encourage folks to reach out to me (about anything), since many don’t feel comfortable posting public comments.

Social Media Integration

I’ve done away with Flickr integration, since I really don’t update it as much as I should.  I’ve also done away with embedded recent tweets, as they take up unnecessary real estate and usually slow down the site.

However, Twitter is still very much the center of my social media activity and for this reason, I have it linked directly under my face/name/bio on every page.  I have also implemented the new @Anywhere feature, which provides a slick hover effect allowing you to instantly follow or see more info without hopping over to twitter.com.  What’s even cooler is that every instance @CasJam (or any Twitter username) is automatically converted to these hover links.

My Del.ico.us links feed is still intact, which represents links that I find useful during day-to-day production – mostly dev tutorials around WordPress, jQuery, and CSS.  If you haven’t noticed, the RSS feed for my Del.ico.us account is synced to my Twitter account, allowing me to tweet it as soon as I read and find it useful enough to bookmark it.

Lastly, I have introduced my Pandora feed, which shows you a slice of my musical tastes.  Enjoy

Navigation Tweaks

This site is completely revolved around the content that I produce.  I felt the site navigation really needed to reflect that, so at the very top of the site I have links to categories and archives.

The categories have been completely re-worked.  They are now aligned with the subjects of my posts, rather than the type of posts.  The last redesign used categories as post types, which doesn’t work for two reasons:  1) More than 90% of the time, I produced the post type “Blog Post”.  Turns out the multi-content-type lifestream approach isn’t my style.  I’m a writer.  2) If I ever decide to introduce additional post types, like video or audio posts, I can utilize custom post types in WordPress 3.0.

Next, I wanted to make the Archives page more useful.  Now, all article titles are listed in chronological order, with Month & Year sub-headers.

Feedback Please

So far, I haven’t been deemed cool enough to have a dribbble membership (but would gladly accept an invite!).  This being the case, my only source of feedback is via Twitter and the comments section.  So pull open the feedback form on the right, and tell me you think