Several years ago, before “blogging” had become a term, I started a blog. Mostly, it was just a way for me to rave and rant about things I didn’t like about college. Re-reading much of what I wrote is actually a bit embarrassing, but I love being able to look back on where I came from.
I ran that blog for about a year. It was a hard-coded HTML document that I pieced together in Notepad, incorporating images I took from Google and re-touched in Paint. After taking that site down, I spent a short period completely Internet-free. Then I started a new site in grad school, and eventually incorporated this blog.
I’ve been using the same page template for just about a year now, and I’ve decided it’s time for an update and redesign. I spend my days designing killer websites for other companies, maybe it’s time my own site had a few new elements to it.
To that end, I’m holding my second ever contest.
Calling all artists
I will be accepting new design entries until July 31. I will score all entries against the following list of criteria. I reserve the right to modify/redesign any submission, but at least one person will win: credit on the website, an invitation for a guest interview, and a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate.
The winning design will:
- Use smart SEO design
- Not look too WordPress-y
- Use AJAX wherever possible to enhance the user experience
- NOT USE FLASH
- Take visual/layout cues from well-designed sites such as The Blog of Tim Ferriss and Least I Could Do
- Be submitted through my contact page as a link to a PSD or high-quality JPG with descriptions
Please don’t email me any files. Post your PSD/JPG online and send a link through the contact page on my main site. To encourage quality designs, I am allowing multiple entries per person – please make sure your designs are appropriate to a marketing blog.
If you use third-party images in your design, please also specify where they come from so I can track things down.
Remember, the contest ends on July 31 (sometime around midnight). Feel free to pass this on to your friends and fellow designers!
Not a whole lot of time, but what level of completeness are you looking for? Some ideas jotted on the back of the New York Times, a rough sketch of home page as a jpg, fully layered homepage in PS, multiple types of pages fully detailed in PS, the entire site coded and ready to be uploaded?
.-= Taylor´s last blog ..CyberSync mini-review =-.
Any level of completeness will do, but ideally some kind of well-layered and well-commented PSD would work best. This gives me the best idea of what you had in mind but also allows me the latitude to change things where I disagree. After all, it is my site