A Fresh New Look

I launched a new theme for my website today. I read a fantastic post recently on Think Vitamin called Cookie Cutter Websites, that really inspired me. It talks about how similar a lot of website’s look these days, but what resonated with me was the quote:

So, this is a mini challenge to designers out there (including me!) to take a look at their designs and make sure we get them to reflect the personality of the person, company or product.

Upon reading that I looked at my site and thought to myself “this is crap”. It looks nice but it doesn’t reflect my personality, there’s no real design theme and it looks a bit “cookie-cutter”. A day or 2 after that this “natural graphic design” concept popped into my head. So I decided to go with that theme and let the design take a natural progression and see what I came up with. I decided I wouldn’t look at anything else, especially other sites for inspiration, and just see what flows out.

I’m pretty pleased with the results. Sure, it has elements and techniques that may be similar to other sites out there. but I feel like it fits me much better. I’m a big fan of natural products, I eat organic whenever I can and I’m straight edge so the “chemical free” thing has a nice double meaning for me.

It’s also a bit of a parody. Everything from coffee to tires seems to be “all natural” these days. Even though I own an “all natural” pet supply shop with my wife, I wanted to poke fun at the trend a little on my site.

Now I just need to update the backlog of new work I’ve done recently.

I’d love to hear your feedback on the design, please leave a comment!