Blog to Business
It’s been many years since I launched Ordered List as my personal website and blog. And at the beginning of this year I used the Ordered List name to start my own web company. Since that time, I’ve wanted to shift the focus of the front side of the site to highlight the business.
I’ve also been wanting to redesign the site to bring a little more visual maturity, while keeping many of the same design elements that I love about the existing site. The result is the sixth incarnation of Ordered List. I’ve cleaned the navigation, added a Tumble Log via Tumblr, and cleaned up a few older articles. In general, a new skin, and some much needed maintenance.
While the paint is still wet, please let me know if you come across any issues. It’s always difficult designing for yourself, and it’s taken quite some time and many, many mockups to find something that I liked. So here we are. I hope you enjoy the new style.
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Published September 09, 2007 by:
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So far there are 65 comments.
Congrats on the slick new design! Definitely more mature, it’s about time you grew up ;)
September 9th, 2007
Looks fantastic, congrats on the design. I love the subtle use of texture everywhere!
September 9th, 2007
Looks excellent! Love it!
September 9th, 2007
Not a huge fan of the colours, but I love the added textures.
The home page is much cleaner and thankfully showcases your portfolio more than your blog, which wasn’t being updated enough to warrant a front-and-center spot on the home page before.
I really like the new navigation too.
September 9th, 2007
The colors used makes the site feel pretty comfortable. Overall I think its very nice with a few neat layout ideas.
September 9th, 2007
Looks excellent Steve. I’d love to see another new t-shirt with a sightly changed colour scheme, I love my Ordered List shirt (wearing it at the moment). I’d be first in the line to purchase a new one!
Great job on the refresh.
September 9th, 2007
Dan: Thanks mom.
Luke: The colors took some getting used to by me as well, but now I’m really enjoying them. And spot on about the portfolio and blog.
Joshua, William and Chris: Thanks much.
September 9th, 2007
Glen: Next time I order, I will. And thanks!
September 9th, 2007
Beautiful design. Like a book cover that you can’t put down. The live preview in comments is sweet too!
September 9th, 2007
At first, I thought “why did he not change the logo to match the color scheme?” and then realized that it was probably cached—I did a shift+refresh and sure enough, it was. ;)
Anyway, I really like this a lot. It looks great! :)
September 9th, 2007
Very nice work as usual Steve, although the colours are all new and the homepage it restructure the site still has the same easy to navigate feel. Top work. (are you taking bets as to how long it takes for someone to steal this design…)
Note: although I do have a brother Paul…thats not him who posted the previous comment, just a weird coincidence I guess.
September 9th, 2007
Like I said before. It’s more mature, and I love how you got the idea for the color scheme from your office. But I can’t help but think that the dotted lines around every box give me the vision of you cross-stitching. XD
September 9th, 2007
Awesome redesign Steve, its got a rugged, outback, wearing some old jeans (but in a good way old) feel to it. I really like it.
September 9th, 2007
When I saw your twitter about redesigning, I was asking myself “how could he possibly improve on this last design?”
And then I saw this. Outstanding work. As always.
September 9th, 2007
Very nice, reminds me of a strange pair of jeans.
September 9th, 2007
Hey Steve, I really like this new version. I especially like how you start off each entry with your wrp excerpt. That is really nice! I will surely use hat as a good example of writing effective summaries for posts. I am very interested to watch how that will affect your writing style.
Otherwise, very clean! Very nice!
September 9th, 2007
The new layout looks great, with the exception of the color palette. The previous color scheme was much better.
September 9th, 2007
I like the way u differentiate your posts, the tumble logs and articles. jots down notes for his own revamp and the comment preview is way cool! Very nicely done indeed.
September 9th, 2007
Superb. I really like your border styles as well as the subtle textures. :-)
September 9th, 2007
Beautiful and sophisticated! I love the olives and browns :D
September 9th, 2007
Everything looks great Steve. I really dig the color scheme and the subtle textures that you have used through out the site. The live preview system is great as well. Is that something you wrote yourself? Either way the attention to detail in this iteration is fantastic. Job well done.
September 10th, 2007
Very nice site. I just love the colors! As said by Biscuitrat, very sophisticated. Although my Ordered List tee doesn’t match the current colors now! Will there be an updated shirt (and maybe a discount for those who already bought it)?
September 10th, 2007
Congratulations, you’ve done an awesome job, that’s a fantastic redesign! The new colors match together pretty nicely, you really have a great taste of style. Your portfolio gets a lot more attention, since the focus of the site shifted away from the blog. Although it’s still not a “corporate website”, I like the matured style very much. Issues? None, on the first look ‘n’ try. I’m currently not wearing my ‘ordered list’-shirt, since it’s dryin’ outside, but I’m absolutely looking forward to the new one (you may regard this as an order). Keep it up!
September 10th, 2007
Great one, Steve! This is my first visit to your site and it’s fantastic! I will use Archive.org to look at your previous versions too.
September 10th, 2007
Steve … great job on the design. Colors and structure rock.
September 10th, 2007
Looks great Steve! Clean, but unique and the analous color scheme together with the border styles really give it character. The first thing I thought of when I saw the new design was BlueFlavor’s Leaflets site. It seems the humble noise filter is making a comeback in a big way. Cheers!
September 10th, 2007
This latest redesign and refocus is awesome – looks great!
September 10th, 2007
I think the colors are a little drab, which I like on a personal level, because I wallow in depression, but I (know less than you about web design) don’t think it will appeal to as broad of an audience because of that. That’s just my $0.02.
September 10th, 2007
Looking sweeeeet! Just love the dotted border inside things. Great work, Steve!
September 10th, 2007
I can’t decide if I like this layout better or not. At the moment, I’m still partial to the old layout, but this one is very nice as well. One thing I noticed is that you cannot tab through the form elements in this comment response form, which is kind of annoying. Other than that, excellent work!
September 10th, 2007
Nevermind, my stupid tab key is just broken.
September 10th, 2007
I liked the green/blue and dark theme a lot, but this design seems more thoughtful and the information organized more logically. I fear earth tones so imagine my surprise.
September 10th, 2007
Sweet redesign. Keep up the killer work!
September 10th, 2007
Truly fantastic! I love the colors and textures. And now I’m discovering a lot of the nifty functionality underneath. Cool!
September 10th, 2007
I am (sort of) a loyal reader, and started to wonder what happened to you after a few months of inactivity. Now I know! The layout is incredible because it’s clean, yet not too bare. I personally do not like dark earth tones, but the more I browse around your site, it definitely grows upon me.
Great job, and keep up the good work!
September 10th, 2007
Awesome redesign Steve You made great work. I really like the new navigation. Regards
September 11th, 2007
Great new design! The colors are well blended and it looks really nice, simple and clean. Great inspiration as I get ready to redo my site and have a few designs I’ve been pondering for other sites as well.
September 11th, 2007
Awesome redesign… Really loved the old site, and have used it for inspiration many times! Really like the colours and the color pallete. Browns are big at the moment!
September 11th, 2007
Hey Steve! Superb redesign or as u said sixth incarnation;)........Keep up the amazing work u do. :) Adieu,
September 11th, 2007
Though i am not sure how did it look previously but the design that i see now is really appealing and great looking, Best of luck with Business and happy blogging~
September 11th, 2007
I love it. While the old design was nice, I much prefer the new look and you’ve definitely nailed your objectives. This design has an added professionalism about it, very nice.
September 12th, 2007
This is a great design but I thought I should mention that the contrast is really horrid on my CRT at work. You should test it on one and see for yourself.
September 13th, 2007
Just stumbled across your site. I really like your new design. The colours and typography work really well. I’ve not seem a blog lke this so it sticks out. On a persoanl note, the only thing I would change is I would use text instead of images for your menu.
September 14th, 2007
Again, I’m the stupid friend that rarely understands what you are talking about, but as soon as I openned you page I said, “Ooo I like the new look.” So take that for what it is worth. I hope all of you are doing well. I miss you guys!
September 14th, 2007
Excellent new design. I love it! and congratulations for starting the web design business.
September 14th, 2007
Nice redesign. Very original color scheme. I love this live comment preview I’m looking at. Mind sharing? The redesign reminds me of particle tree . Well good luck with your new business. Looking forward to more great design. BTW- With the link markup system, I can’t figure out how to add a period after the link without a space. Maybe its just me being ignorant.
September 16th, 2007
http://corkingdesign.co.uk/ “dont steal my stuff its bad karma” ...is this the new catch phrase for designers?
September 17th, 2007
Great article !!! Thank You very much. Can I translate it to my website ?
September 18th, 2007
This is a really great web design. Information hierarchy is spot on. Although the brown is not my favourite colour it is used really well throughout the site. Oh the noise in the background of the comments/headers etc is a great touch, as is the javascript comment preview
September 18th, 2007
Really like the way the site looks
September 18th, 2007
Very nice! I like the new design just like the old one, but you’re right, it’s more “mature” now.
Go on, keep up with the good work — it’s really nice!
September 19th, 2007
That is truly great and amazing — especially the comment preview is a very nice feature that I would like to see being implemented on all websites :)
September 20th, 2007
Uhh ahh I don’t like this colors. its something between loam and khaki, darkgreen and brown. Difficult to read the text. The bold introduction-text of this article is flickering.
September 21st, 2007
Seriously well made website. Excellent use of brown.
September 25th, 2007
I like the new design, but not as much as I loved the old one. Is that still online at all?
Also, the live comment preview is cool, but it doesn’t change HTML entities so if I try and add a angled bracket it screws up a little.
September 25th, 2007
A véry pleasant site to read and visit! I’ve been an occassional visitor of your site, and this new design is definately one of the sites that are (imho) very pleasing to the eyes. Congrats on your fresh design ;-)
September 26th, 2007
I read a lot of your posts, but still miss the function to comment on older post, because I would like to ask, comment and add ideas. Would be very interesting to start talking about things that happend in the past.
September 26th, 2007
I never thought that using brown could look so good :-) Like the new design.
September 26th, 2007
Great job, really “ordered”. Well done.
September 26th, 2007
I really like the background texture, a breath of fresh air from all the shiny 2.0 copy cats running around. Also, my comments appeared in the comment box before I even hit the submit button, ...magic.
September 26th, 2007
Beautiful! I liked your old design too, but this is truly a work of design art. Great interplay of colours, nice layout. I’m impressed :)
September 30th, 2007
Nice and well made website. Excellent use of brown colour.
October 1st, 2007
Great new site design! I’ve got a design with very similar colors and most have loved it! Now I have a reference to someone else.
October 4th, 2007
Fantastic design! I also love the dynamic comment box you have here, and seeing my comment appear in real time as I type it :)
October 8th, 2007
One of the best live comment previews i’ve ever seen. Nice touch asynchronously fetching and inserting the gravatar.
October 8th, 2007