A new standard

Posted on October 29, 2011

In an effort to improve the user experience and the standard of articles on this site I’ve given it a complete overhaul. The site has been re-designed and re-coded as a WordPress template and is self-hosted, so no more downtime or missing images because of Tumblr’s odd cloud hosting.

This redesign comes at a time when something huge is changing in my life – I’m no longer actively working as a freelancer. Instead I’m going to be working solely on personal projects (more information about this coming soon) so it’s easier for me to maintain a healthy work/life balance.

About the new site

I redesigned, recoded and launched this site in under 24 hours – a personal goal I set myself so I could go from concept to completion as quickly as possible whilst maintaining good standards.

What you can see on the site

I’ve got to give credit where credit’s due, and without the following things I wouldn’t have been able to create the site in such a short period of time.

TypeKit - I’m using a combination of Proxima Nova and FF Tisa Web Pro
WordPress - Needs no explanation
Instapress - To display my Instagram photographs
RainyShots - To display my most recent Dribbble shots

NB: One thing you’ll notice is that the navigation is slightly different in the picture at the top of this article. During the build I decided that additional pages were unnecessary clutter, so removed them from the equation completely.

You should subscribe to the feed or follow me on Twitter.

http://twitter.com/jimmithy James O’Brien

Where’s the credit to me?

http://www.lukejones.me/ Luke Jones

Sorry dude, totally forgot to give you credit. I’m sure credit will be coming to you in a blog post extremely soon

http://www.stephenmdixon.com Steve Dixon

I love this design. I’m especially in love with the typeface you’ve used as well, Luke. It’s clean, it’s clutter-free. It’s beautiful. Kudos! Out of interest, how come you’re no longer actively freelancing?

http://www.lukejones.me/ Luke Jones

Thanks Steve they’re two of my favourite fonts – Proxima Nova and FF Tisa, lovely jubbly.

Well, I work full-time at a company in Birmingham performing design, front-end development and project managing and that’s taking up a lot of my time at the moment even outside of work. Not only does this make me difficult to have a good work/life balance it means that the service I can offer to clients is not as good as it was 6 months ago, so it’s not fair on them or me.

With personal projects I can work in my own time and enjoy it more because I know it’ll be my name on it and I can put as much effort into what I love doing as possible without the budget and time constraints that come with client work.

http://www.stephenmdixon.com Steve Dixon

They definitely are lovely! It’s great to hear designers working on their own products and making a success of it. It ensures ultimate creative freedom as well as hones our skills to become better.

http://daneden.me Dan Eden

Great redesign, luke. I’d love to see some responsiveness for mobile devices, I think it could work well with the design.

http://www.lukejones.me/ Luke Jones

Thanks Dan – you’re far too nice to me.

I’m looking into making my site responsive I just don’t want to rush into something like that without reading more about it first. The moment I do that I’ll end up with exactly the kind of responsive site I had – one that isn’t carefully considered and constructed. I already have a layout in mind, it’s just making it happen.
Priority on my first is to tidy up the typography on the site a bit. There are some inconsistencies I’m a tad unhappy with. As soon as they’re done I can dedicate more time to perfecting bits and bobs.
http://www.stephenmdixon.com Steve Dixon

I’m usually an advocate of whatever works, but in all fairness, whilst I’ve been an advocate for and against responsive web design, I personally prefer the full web experience on my iPhone and if the service requires it, an app.

http://twitter.com/rainypixels Nishant Kothary

Nice to see RainyShots in the wild.

http://www.lukejones.me/ Luke Jones

It’s a fantastic plugin thanks!