Category Archives: Blog Design

Blog Design: Grant Baldwin Blog

Posted on April 18, 2008 in: Blog Design, Projects

A couple of days ago I completed yet another blog design project: I was hired by Grant Baldwin to design and implement a Wordpress theme that matches his current website.

I was just about to finish my first free Wordpress theme at that time, so I used it as a starting point for this theme. Like I said before, Corporate Sandbox is great for stuff like that. It uses a basic two column layout, but it doesn’t have a lot of styling.

If you didn’t get your copy yet, I suggest you do it now. You can even recommend it to your friend or blog readers. And tell them there’s a new blog designer in town. :) It’s no wonder that blog post just became the most viewed on this blog.

In this case I just had to change a couple of colors and fonts, make some tweaks to the header and take care of some plugin integration. Needles to say I saved a great deal of time on this project. The client got himself a personalized Wordpress theme for a very attractive price and I got the right price for my effort.

But don’t take it from my. Here’s what Grant had to say:

Adrian was great to work with. He was very flexible, patient and was extremely knowledgeable. He got the project done quickly and professionally and I would highly recommend his work. I’m looking for other projects he can work on for me… he’s that good!

Everyone wins! My kind of projects. ;)

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Redesign Coming Up

Posted on March 23, 2008 in: Blog Design

Funny thing happened: Blogtrepreneur has a post about 9 design styles to get you into CSS galleries and I’m in it. My current theme hasn’t been featured in any CSS gallery yet, but hopefully the new Wordpress theme will be. I just started working on it. Here’s what I have so far:

Rubiqube 2

Here are some of the reasons that made me want to change my Wordpress theme:

  • Switch to a lighter theme and use more white space, as opposed to wood space :)
  • Move some of the sidebar content to the About page only
  • Better showcase my older posts: I will use some AJAX to show some tabbed content in the sidebar
  • Change the logo and make it stand out more
  • Better ad integration: 125×125 and some text ads for now
  • Get rid of all the icons (they are great, but a bit too much) and add a personal touch by creating some custom icons
  • Be featured in at least one CSS gallery ;)

This is just a draft I cooked up yesterday. I’ll spend some more time tweaking details.

Feel free to comment about what you think the new theme should contain. Is there something you feel is missing from the current theme? I’d love to hear your input. Thanks!

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A Strong Personal Brand Means a Memorable Blog

Posted on in: Blog Design

Since I got into blogging about 2 years ago, I probably saw hundreds of blogs using beautifully designed custom themes. Still, there’s only a handfull of blogs that were memorable enough to remember after a long period of time. In most cases, what made the blog memorable was not the design itself, but the person behind the blog. Not necessarily because the blogger was a famous person, but because of the way he chose to visually brand himself.

Below are some examples of bloggers using visuals to build a strong personal brand. Of course there are other elements (achievements, networking, charisma, helping others, supporting a cause, etc.) that contribute to a personal brand. I’m strictly talking about visuals here:

Ayoush Saran - his site was recently featured in CSS Mania. The action figure representation of himself is the best creative idea I’ve seen recently. This is also a great example of how you can build a viral personal brand.

Ayoush Saran


Matt Brett - his blog went through a redesign since I first saw it, but it still keeps the same look and feel. Matt is famous for a lot of projects, like the standardization of feed icons, but I will always remember him as the guy with the grungy looking blog, who loves video games.

Matt Brett


Doug Dosberg - he’s probably one of the first bloggers to use the cartoon representation of himself, instead of a real picture. There are so many bloggers using it nowadays. Doug managed to stay memorable, by adding a little twist: the head band and the chopsticks.

Doug Dosberg


Brad, Ryan, Keegan aka The Big Noob - the big bold title, the navy blue background, but most of all the portraits on the header and the featured post, all these elements make this blog memorable. It’s probably one of the best blogs (certainly the most famous) making use of the blue / green color scheme.

The Big Noob


Matthew Mullenweg - the first time I saw his blog, I didn’t know he’s the guy behind Wordpress. Now I know he’s the #1 most important Matt in the world, but when I say Matt Mullenweg, I instantly think about the header collage, the mug, the childhood picture.

Matt Mullenweg


Lisa Bettany - Lisa is a “multimedia producer, blogger, photographer, 2.0 expert, model, actress” and also “Canada’s Sexy Geek Blogger”. Oau! She’s definitely a purple cow. She is yet another example of beauty and brains. The blog header pretty much sums it up and makes her blog so not easy to forget.

Lisa Bettany

Do you have other examples? Do share. ;)

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Is Wood The New White?

Posted on March 5, 2008 in: Blog Design

A lot of designers (myself included) love white space. Does this mean from now on we’ll have to make good use of “wood space”? :)

Anyway, here are some (there are probably a lot more) blog designs that use a wooden background. You may have seen them already in one or two CSS galleries. I just thought it would be interesting to try a visual comparison. Here goes:

Alex Buga - Alex is a fellow Romanian designer and I suspect he’s the one who started this trend (at least for blogs). He does quality work and the sites he designed are featured in all major CSS galleries.

Alex Buga

Cristian Neagu - Cristian is also a Romanian designer, who’s site was recently featured in Best Web Gallery.

Candes Project

Lesly Garreau

Lesly Garreau

Henry Jones

Henry Jones

As you can see, I use a wooden texture myself, but only for the blog header. I used to like the contrast between the background and the pictures from my flickr feed (I had some thumbs up there in a previous version). I don’t like the whole darkness thing anymore and plan to switch to something light. That’s why I never get any thing done, cause I change my mind a lot, when it comes to designing my website. :P

Anyway… for those of you still digging the whole wooden texture thing, here’s a great tutorial on how to build one in Photoshop.

LATER UPDATE: Hey, I’m not the only one to notice this trend. Noupe has a list of 22 designs using that piece of wood. Just found out via their RSS feed.

LATER UPDATE 2: Make that 23, cause they’ve been kind enough to add my site to the list. ;)

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