You see this blog? I don’t like the design. It’s better since I took this theme, but I need a new one! I want a theme that will give me the envy to blog on it. I want a theme that will tell you a bit about me. I want a theme that will make me say each time I open my site “OMG this site is awesome!”.
Why do I tell you this? Because I’m sucking when we talk about UI. I need to hire a designer or a company with good designers. I will pay to have something custom. Oh but attention, I don’t want any designer. I want someone who has experience with non usual blog or site design. I don’t want a business look. I want something that represents me.
For those of you that know me, you know that I have a couple of blogs. Some in French, some in English, some for my projects, some technical, some not… I want to put all these babies in one place, and I choose this one because of his name and what it represents. With this in mind, it’s why it’s so important for me to have something more beautiful: it’s gonna be my internet home.
I’m also going back to the blog as the primary social media. Not that I didn’t blog a lot after I join Twitter or Facebook, but I want this place to be the one stop for all my sharing, ideas, blogs, pictures… I’m back to basic, but more on this on another post.
If you are a designer or a creative shop, please leave a comment on this post with a link to an online portfolio. I want to see your creativity, and I will contact you only if I think you are able to do the job. You don’t have to do the integration to WordPress, but it’s a good point as I don’t have time to do it, and honestly, I don’t really want to do the integration. In the worst case, I can do it, or I know a company that can do it near perfection. My problem is the find the right designer that will understand my needs.
To help you understand what I want, here are some guidelines on the technical and visual part:
Creativity / UI
- Keep in mind the title of the blog: Out of comfort zone;
- Simplicity and clean is the main idea;
- Colorful and extravert to give a taste of my personality;
- Call to action:
- subscribe to RSS feed or to the e-mail updates;
- connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Google+;
- Importance of the category (in French or English):
- No brainer blog post;
- Reflexion blog post;
- Technical blog post;
- No text, usage of image in the design as this blog will target French and English people.
Technical
- Respect Web Standards
- Usage of HTML5 (example: WOFF, CSS3 Media Queries…)
- Responsive Web Design (for PC, tablet, phone…)
- Progressive enhancement instead of graceful degradation
Examples
- https://ma.tt/– big and colorful header and footer
- https://www.ubelly.com/– colorful design with a touch a drawing interface
- https://benthebodyguard.com/index2.php– big text
- https://www.time2project.com/– text with background color different from the page one
- https://marcobarbosa.com/– usage of the font, mouse over different color and combination of colors
- https://www.whynotblue.com/accueil/– non-traditional way to display information for a company website
- https://www.marketingmedia.ca/– usage of the font and color after the menu and before the “what we do” section
- https://www.okam.ca – font and simplicity
Keep in mind that these examples are not sites that I like from A to Z, but I commented on what I like from them. You can start from the actual theme as it’s a good beginning and the technical criteria (usage of HTML5, responsive Web design…) are already there. If you have any question, ask them in the comment section also. Remember, the big work is around creativity so don’t be afraid about my technical needs!
So, anyone in the place who can help me? Anyone is in for the challenge? Oh, and if you are not a designer, you can send this blog post to one you know, or post in the comment section some websites that could interest me, so I can add more examples up there.
