Tales of a Designer

Working on a Redesign

Just a quick update, I’ve gladly found some free time to begin working on a redesign of this site. I like the direction that I’m heading, and it’s a good thing that I haven’t yet started over 5 times like a typical redesign that I go through. My approach to this one was a little different than the past.

Normally I start off with graphics and page layout, but this time I started with just a couple paragraphs and a header, so that I could design around those. I believe they call that epicenter design:

Epicenter design focuses on the true essence of the page — the epicenter — and then builds outward. This means that, at the start, you ignore the extremities: the navigation/tabs, footer, colors, sidebar, logo, etc. Instead, you start at the epicenter and design the most important piece of content first.

For me, and this site, the most important piece of information is the blog post. This has felt like a pretty comfortable approach. I know many designers spend tons of time on setting up their grid and gathering color schemes but I honestly did not want to go that route. With limited time, I need to be as effective as possible and not nitpick with the small things that don’t matter. I’ll save that for client work.

Best case scenario would be that I got this redesign up later this week. That will be quite a stretch, but I can promise that I will have it done before SXSW.