During Chris’s two and a half weeks of Christmas vacation, we spent our time redesigning a few blogs. We had a grand time working together & making the interwebs a tiny bit prettier. I’ll be sharing a finished project each week along with a design tip (or two) for a better blog. I can't seem to find Ashley's before image, but the design before we got to it was nothing heinous or special. It had a simple grey background and bold text for the header. Ashley is a photography blogger who is absolutely obsessed with Design Love Fest (come on, who isn't?). She wanted her site to be accessible to teens (she does high school portraiture) and their parents, but more polished than sites like American Eagle or Roxy. After several different iterations we got the above result. Often times it's clients who really push designers into new directions and broaden their styles. And this design was definitely the case. I don't typically design in photoshop, but with this design I did (the drawn elements at least). This design style has definitely given me a lot to think about as I move forward with my own design and the branding for my online calligraphy course. I thought I'd forego any blog/design tips today and share with you a couple of the unused iterations for Orange Tree Studios. This was the first iteration. Ashley didn't like the script font (Antrokas- great in small doses!). It definitely made me realize how dependent I am on script fonts/calligraphy in my designs. This is the second iteration. I didn't use any script fonts, but the color scheme may have been a little too varied. The orange slice needed to go, too. I used Blanch Inline for the header font and Alexandria FLF for the titles. Again, I'm really happy with the finished product, I just wanted to share those other directions with you. I felt like they were great, but just not the direction Ashley wanted.