Here’s the latest addition to the portfolio! Crunchy Mustard!

Crunchy Mustard is a personal blog of mine and Christian’s along with our friends Yurij and Ryan. This blog was launched a few months back and features a wide variety of absurd news stories and findings.

I decided on this excellent graphic from Simon Oxley because of its absurd nature and the way it fit into the theme. I put a fishbowl around it and voila: a strange blog logo (but a perfect fit!) was formed.

The aquas and greens fit together naturally; they’re reminiscent of a pond scene. The blog is run strictly off WordPress with your basic features in the sidebar. These include: an about blurb with some pretty funny author photos, the top commenters for the month (along with a link back to their blogs!), your basic blogroll, search spot, category display, and meta section with RSS and login “stuff.”

Our extra cool features include: a small sidebar chat room (it pops with each new message!), and a display of recent readers via mybloglog.  Not found in the sidebar are these great plugins: ajax comments for the permalink pages, and a special “dofollow” feature to allow our visitor’s sites to be crawled by Google!

View this latest portfolio item over at… our portfolio!

I had another excellent time working with my friend, Tyrone II at SEMTAN Media on the redesign for The Moderate Voice once again. The original concept was actually presented by one of the contributors to TMV (it’s quite a large blog!) and I took the idea and ran with it.

To really pick up on the new age of media, I chose vibrant blues to match bright blue sky. I used heavily contrasting colors to make things easy to read, and styled your basic “Arial” font to look like a totally different one! To really make the design “click” I used famfamfam’s AMAZING silk icons. (Check ‘em out!) I also created simple header 2 tags for the sidebar, so that Tyrone could throw in any sidebar headers he needed with out fussing around with lots of code.

The left sidebar displays the “meat” of the blog (dynamic page listing, login spot, author features, categories, blog roll) while the yellow (right) sidebar caters to the chunk of ads TMV has displayed. This really allows the reader to separate the two, and to migrate over to the ads only if they’re interested (while still pulling in some income for TMV!)

The code I set up allowed Tyrone to drop in quite a few different plugins as well. Take a look!

I had the MOST FANTASTIC time ever creating this design for Alexis and Justin. It just makes you want to run down to the beach and feel the waves run over you. Enjoy!

From our portfolio feature:

While creating a website for Alexis and Justin’s special day, I often found myself smiling at the thought of their big day to come. The end product is simple yet enchanting… perfect for one of the happiest days of a young couple’s life!

The overall mood of this sea-themed wedding is captured in the sand-dollar and wave-like heading. Long, elegant fonts were used for this design to add a “wedding-like” touch as well. The design directly mirrors the theme of the invitations. Each invitation directs the guest to this website for more information as well.

The website features a homepage with the basic invitation information reproduced. Links to the bride and groom’s registry are also available. An itinerary is included to inform guests of the events set for the week along with a page dedicated to the beautiful Sea Island, Georgia.

To top it all off, this website was created entirely with WordPress!

Best wishes to Alexis and Justin!

I just had the pleasure of launching the brand new AIDP blog. It has quite a bit to offer in terms of “souped up” blog features. This blog is the new home to (at the time of this post) twelve different bloggers posting on a variety of topics. From the official description: “The AIDP is the oldest association of criminal law specialists in the world and one of the oldest scientific associations. This blog serves as a discussion site for all things law, with a focus upon criminal law, comparative criminal justice, international criminal law, international humanitarian law, war crimes, international criminal tribunals, human rights and counterterrorism law & policy.”

Since there were quite a few bloggers who weren’t extremely tech-savvy, a special permissions plugin was used to restrict what each blogger could edit so no part of the design would go awry by accident. Each blogger has their own personal biography page which they can edit, along with a personal CAPTCHA contact form which forwards any reader messages to their e-mail address.

A special manipulation of the WordPress “loop” was used to display certain posts in certain areas. A special “Tribunal Materials” tool was created to showcase various media items the bloggers wished to post. Along with this special archive, a slick “months and posts” archive plugin was used.

Various subscription opportunities for the blog’s feed are located on the right sidebar. AIDP took our suggestion to use Feedburner for all their subscription needs. Users can subscribe via e-mail to the feed, view the total number of subscribers, or add AIDP’s feed to more than ten different feed readers.

A variety of post features were also used. A “share this” link was placed beneath each post allowing readers to e-mail the post to a friend, or add it to popular social networking sites such as digg and technorati. Additionally a “Print This” feature was also included. This link leads the reader to a black and white, easily printable version of the current post.

But wait! There’s more! Each post features a small author head shot. This was a nice touch that allows for more personality in the blog. This feature can also be applied to comments, and more.

We had a fantastic time working with AIDP to create their new blog. We hope you like the project as well, and will consider Blog What? Design for your next project!

After only a slight delay, we’ve got Morgan’s new website up! Blog What Design is proud to feature our latest e-commerce website:
After Eleven Apparel

From our portfolio bit:

Morgan needed a website that would show case her in-house t-shirt design studio. She was looking for a theme that would scream “rocker chic.”

Blog What Design was able to giver her exactly what she needed. The online store is run through a customized version of Paypal merchant tools, along with a built in “blog radio” playing her favorite music. BWD also optimized each of her product photos and included her sponsored team page with a special image roll-over effect. The design features shocking colors, and a unique layout.

Morgan also custom designed the coat of arms—the centerpiece for her design. Rock on Mogo!

On another note, we hope everyone is recovering from their Christmas’ well (and getting prepared for New Years of course!) So have a fun, happy, and healthy New Year!