Hello hello hello! Eeeks, I'm so excited, because here's my new blog layout on which I've been working for the last few days and which I've been planning for the last month.
At the end of the last year, I felt the desire to make a few changes on my blog and to redesign some elements and structures. In January, I was super busy with studying for this semester's exams (which I all passed, yayy! :)) and didn't have the time to get started, but I used train rides and free minutes to think about a concept and to make first sketches.
What was most important to me was to keep my style and the feel of this blog while changing parts of the blog's structure and making some elements a little bit more minimalistic. To make it easier for new readers to navigate my blog, I wanted to make two button bars out of the one bar I had before, I wanted to split it up into one navigation bar for content and categories and one button bar for organizational and informational stuff.
Moreover, I wanted to change some of the sub-pages of my blog and add more content to my archives.
Making sketches and writing down ideas was tons of fun and absolutely helped me to sort my thoughts and to make a list of what to make first and of what to do later. Thus, it made it easier to focus on what was most important and to get started as soon as I was ready and got enough time.
The color scheme I wanted to use and implement into my new design came to my mind quite early, long before I knew how the new structure would look like. I kept my standard pink (the second one from the left side) and added rose, coral and two shades of yellow. Those colors are pure happiness to me and fit my style extremely well.
As a next step, I made my ideas and sketches come true and created the elements as image file in photoshop. I'm a really visual person and working this way helps me to imagine the final look and lets me see how the single elements fit together. This step is one of my fave parts. :)
As each time when I'm making bigger visual changes on my blog come true, my best friend Anja is a great help: although I had a clear vision of how I wanted everything to look like and implemented all changes myself, she always has lots of extremely useful extra feedback and advice for me and sees tiny details to be improved which I don't see myself (she's a media designer and has lots of experience and an eye for aesthetics :)) and I'm always super thankful for her help and I learn a lot. :*
In the end, I think I was able to keep the feel and overall happy and colorful look of my blog, but I decluttered the sidebar, changed buttons, navigation and some other structures, put a bigger focus on content with adding the big buttons which direct to my archives and I made navigation for new readers easier.
When thinking about my blog in the past few years, it's always super satisfying for me to be able to improve my blog's design nearly on my own and I'm so happy about all the knowledge I've gained. This time, I even made lots of changes in the basic html code of my blog without destroying anything, this makes me extra proud. ;)
Can't wait to hear your opinions!
While I'm already enjoying my blog's new look, there are still some minor changes to be made, but most of the work has been done.
Happy week!
Lu