In Over Your Head

Wow, look over here! Awesome! Bright! Shiny!

Have you been reading this blog via RSS? It may be time to take another look.

Today, the team at Stresslimitdesign and I are making public the final redesign of this blog, which has otherwise been half-assedly designed by myself since 2004. Only now, however, can I say I’m really happy of the way it looks and behaves.

Justin, Colin, and everyone else over there did a ridiculous amount of work on this beast. They built an entire set as backdrop (the two red LED signs in the design actually exist, as do all the other objects you see). The archive section is built from scratch and looks frikkin gorgeous. Everything has been thought through and there are a million little details that become noticeable over time. Check out the blog and the new landing page at JulienSmith.com.

One of the goals we had was to change the fact that every person in social media kind of has the same site– Thesis template, “add me on Twitter” badge, etc. etc. We wanted to do something different, that doesn’t only focus on converting, and that differentiates me (and weirds people out slightly) the way I feel that I would myself in person. Heh.

Anyway, if you haven’t been here in a while, I recommend you look around a bit, and let me know what you think.

Thanks for continuing to follow me through all the incoherent ramblings. 🙂

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Joe Gannon

Comments

10 responses to “Wow, look over here! Awesome! Bright! Shiny!”

  1. Colleen Wainwright Avatar
    Colleen Wainwright

    As long as I’ve been visiting it, your site has been both gorgeous and an accurate reflection of you.

    And I hear you on the Thesis thing. Not to knock it! It’s a wonderful framework and I’ll be porting the undercarriage over to it soon (the code on my poor, Colleen-hacked WP Frankenstein template is a ganky horror). But I’ll be keeping the look.

    I like my big, clean, non-converting site, too.

    Congrats, toots!

    Reply
  2. Dave Doolin Avatar
    Dave Doolin

    I want a big, shiny, clean, spectacularly converting site. Am I delusional? Are those desires mutually exclusive?

    Reply
  3. Larry Avatar
    Larry

    I’m a newbie to your blog, so I haven’t been exposed to your “ramblings” for too long. But they almost always make me think about things I probably wouldn’t otherwise think of – so please keep pumping ’em out!

    Reply
  4. Brian Frankson Avatar
    Brian Frankson

    Blog looks good, I do get error msgs@ Julien smith.com using my iPod touch.

    It’s funny I have various other computers 10″ and a couple 20″ sceen sizes I could choose from, yet I often use the one with the smallest screen to read blogs or rrs and email. Convienience wins.

    It seems the Canadain auto insurance companies thinks these little devices are taking over and causing problems, with car usage bans in many provinces now. How many more format changes to the web or disruptions to daily life flow do you think will occur as computing power and devices shrink to the palm of our hand?

    Keep up the good work

    Reply
  5. Dave Avatar
    Dave

    Shiny indeed. Very nice job. There are a lot of nice subtle little touches in the design — almost easter eggs — that I like a lot.

    I’m a little surprised that you’re not using juliensmith.com as the default domain for the whole site, but I guess branding has some pretty massive inertia.

    Stay awesome,
    -Dave

    Reply
  6. AnotherGuy Avatar
    AnotherGuy

    I definitely like the site, Julien. I had begun building my own site like this a while back, same wood flooring and grey-ish walls, actually, and then the blog crashed for a few days and I just reverted back to another theme downloaded from a free WP theme club.

    What I’ve learned from all of my trials with blog design, and in your success with it, is that sometimes you’ll tinker a lot over a period of time by yourself. But when you are diligent and continue to focus on the most important part of the website, which is communication, then eventually you’ll be able to hire someone else to finish the design for you.

    Which means it looks “frickin’ gorgeous”- and yours does. 🙂

    Reply
  7. Mark Leslie Avatar
    Mark Leslie

    I normally read your posts via RSS, but of course had to come back and see what was different. Certainly bright and shiny and straightforward — when I was browsing around and clicking links up top, I could have sworn I saw your image pop up in the bottom right corner for a split second. Now that weird-ed me out. Of course, it could just be the heavy doses of cold medication I’m taking.

    Reply
    1. Julien Avatar
      Julien

      I’d definitely like some of that cold medication, Mark.

      Reply
  8. Kenny Silva Avatar
    Kenny Silva

    I’ve been reading your blog for a few weeks now via RSS. I decided to come look at the site when I saw this post. I really like it. Simple yet hip. This coming from one of those cookie-cutter Thesis types… keep up the “incoherent ramblings!”

    Reply
  9. Sloane Berrent Avatar
    Sloane Berrent

    Totally bright and shiny. Like you. Love it. Looking to do a “hello” landing page of my own, might want to connect with you over how your guys did yours. Plus excuse for us to catch up.

    Best,
    @sloane

    Reply

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