Redesign Rage – New Facelifts For 9 Blogs From The Design Community

Webdesigners love it, editors adore it, advertisers are mad about it, users generally hate it :] The redesign of a popular blog usually gets bad feedback, because everybody was so used with the old look, that cannot accept any changes! But sometimes we need to do it. The Envato crew made a lot of great changes over the last few months with the help of the mighty Derek Herman of Valen Design, inspiring others to get a facelift. See the details below and please tell us your opinions in the comments.

Design Observer | Redesign Details

Our original design was humble: a default template in Moveable Type 2.6 called “Trendy.” We’ve stuck with this design for over two years, despite many complaints that we were 1) not being designers, and 2) that reversed-out type is difficult to read. Read more

Design Taxi

As a daily updated, international design media and like any good taxi, TAXI is a vehicle that drives any creative member within the industry to where they want to be, on time. With this strong philosophy behind our operation, TAXI has grown to be the most informative and extensive resource for the creative community that delivers and promotes creative talents via the most important medium of today– the World Wide Web.

Brand New | Redesign Details

When we launched Brand New back in October 2006 I have to admit that I haphazardly put the blog together. I wanted to do it quick and painless, not knowing or assuming that it would become our flagship blog. 30 months, 420-plus posts and 25,000-plus comments later, it was time to give Brand New a relative taste of its own medicine and we decided to redesign it. Following are the improvements we made. Read more

Design Bump | Redesign Details

The new DesignBump is a social bookmarking website aimed purely at the design and web community. It’s an extremely handy place to find both great new design content and to submit your own articles for votes. Read more

Creattica Daily | Redesign Details

Creattica Daily has gotten a pretty sweet makeover, not that it wasn’t already awesome. Collis (CEO of Envato) was itching to try out a new larger 1200px wide design, and one that will pretty much update and maintain itself without the need to post daily roundups or cost tons of cash since the site has not been very profitable. Read more

Pro Blog Design

The big goal with the redesign was to make everything simpler. I loved the old design, but there could be a lot happening at once with it. Like on the homepage there used to be a most recent post, 4 small horizontal thumbnails and then 4 more post buttons, all of which could fit onto a large monitor at once. With the new design, everything is bigger, so you see a lot less in one go.

1stwebdesigner | Redesign Details

Maybe (no, really!) you noticed 1stwebdesigner site has got completely new look! I was working for a while to that design, tried many different color schemes, did a lot of testing, talked with my friends about best solutions and finally came out with this version. Read more

Freelance Switch | Redesign Details

Today I’m very happy to unveil the latest iteration of FreelanceSwitch which introduces a bucketload of new features including a directory of freelancers complete with search facilities, profile pages for users, unified logins for the forums and the rest of the site, a resource directory and of course a fresh design for the whole site. Read more

Creativity Den | Redesign Details

I felt that the sharpness of everything didn’t really give the site character, it didn’t really have any memorable features. However after two days straight I have redesigned CreativityDen. Now it is brighter, bigger but still with some crisp touches. Read more

Catalin Zorzini

Catalin is the founder of Mostash - a social marketing boutique - and he's always happy to share his passion for graphic design & social media. Catalin Zorzini has 219 posts at Inspired Mag & counting!

Comments

Liam McCabe August 3rd

Thanks for including CreativityDen

I think both freelanceswitch and designbump are beautiful designs!
Dainis Graveris August 3rd

wow, man didn't know there are so many sites with new redesigns! But all cases I see look much more proffessional THEN!

I knew only about Designbump actually
graphicdesignblog August 4th

Hey thanks for listing these prominent facelifts of Graphic Design community. I only knew about Design Bump and 1stWebDesigner and both look really professional
Michael Martin August 4th

Thanks again for showcasing Pro Blog Design there Catalin! Those redesigns all look great, I love seeing what other people come up with for their sites! Keeps us all on our toes
rickyaustin August 4th

You might consider adding Design Observer and Brand New, both have redesigned in the past month.
inspiredmag August 4th

Bingo! Great idea, Ricky! thx
Alex August 4th

I think that is too much attention for subscribe and follow buttons. User click them only once, and what to do with them after? answer is nothing. From all of it I like FreelanceSwitch redesign (besides, flash injections on article titles is great!)
Brian Yerkes August 8th

Nice post of the re-designs! I saw most of them. Really like DesignBump's re-design.

I just re-designed my own personal site, http://www.brianyerkes.com/brianyerkes-com-gets...
adwrighty August 20th

What I like here is that no-one’s thrown the baby out of the bathwater. The redesigns are enhancements and still recognizable as their original form.
Great work…
Stu | Self Conclusion September 21st

Great post thanks guys! I agree with Brian, DesignBump’s is nice!