Looking back
My previous site has been far more successful than I ever dreamed it could be. Yet, I felt it was time to move on. Some people wondered why I wanted to redesign. So many people like it, so why change it? Well, just like many other graphic designers, I always want to improve my own creations. Some sort of gene must prevent you from being pleased by your own creations after a certain period of time. I always say I am my own worst client.
When I launched my previous site, I was trying out different things, such as interviewing designers, illustrators, and other artists. Later on, I also began writing about modern home design from time to time. But, as with other sites (and many aspects of life), you grow and experiment, and before you know it, you need to restructure in order to have balance, clarity, and an experience that makes sense. I was bothered by the way you had to navigate through the old site to get to the content you wanted, and I sensed that a lot of good content was sort of hidden and hard to find.
My new icon uses bright colors that match my personality. I've used a three-dimensional geometric object with V shapes to reflect the first letter of my name.
New approach
This post's title and homepage already reveal that this isn't a simple redesign—some new colors, new look, new skin. No, with this new site I want to clearly differentiate my areas of interest so that people can enter the site and immediately focus on the subjects that impassion them. Secondly, I see a critical need for sites that have only one voice when designers are looking for graphical inspiration. I know that I'm not inventing the wheel here, but often inspiration sites are run by several people or have many reader contributions. The result can be a mix of too many different styles (and levels of quality) all shouting at you. This isn't the environment in which I feel inspired. I need one very selective voice, a sort of design firewall that filters out all the junk so you discover quality instead of just quantity. I need a clean environment to see the array of inspiring pieces; this means guided direction and no flashing ads. I'm trying to take a different path and find that niche. Last, but not least, I'm proud to be Belgian. But, unlike Dutch design, you don't see much on the internet from our little country. I'd like to change that by sharing some of Belgium's graphic designs from the past and the present.
Four different sections
On my new site I make a clear distinction between graphic/web design and modern home design because I realize that not every graphic designer is interested in both. I decided to split these into two sections. I also added two new sections, both gallery-style, that I hope you'll enjoy. So I offer:
- Graphic & Web Design
- Modern Home Design
- Belgian Graphic Design
- My colorful wellspring of inspiration
New look
The color palette
As much as I like the look of my previous site, a new direction was needed to create this site. A new approach calls for a new look. I knew I wanted to have a completely different color palette. This time, no light text on dark background, yet I didn't want a light background, either. One of the strong points of using a dark background is that illustrations and photos pop more. This was the main reason why I chose this particular color palette. For this site I tried to find the middle ground without resorting to plain mid-grey. Mid-grey isn't an inherently wrong choice, but it would be for my site, as I believe that colors on a personal site should reflect who you are—your personality. This is one of the fun, but also most challenging parts of creating your own website, especially for a lover of color, as I am.
The new icon
The icon was created purely from experimentation with shapes. After doodling for a while, trying out different things with the letter V, from curly, rounded ones to a 3D look, I ended up with this kinda weird cube. People who have seen some of my illustrations know that I like geometric shapes, so combining one with the V shape was a natural choice and felt right. The straight lines, combined with the transparent effect, give the icon a modern look, which I believe goes perfectly with the new look of this site.
Neutraface of House Industries, the typeface of choice for my new design.
The typography
Chalet has been a signature typeface for me, but since I'd chosen to go for an entirely new look, I also wanted to change the typeface. I have a preference for sans serif fonts, especially for big headings. After investigating for some time I decided on Neutraface. I'm using different Neutraface fonts for my large headings and navigation.
As for the body text, I initially wanted to use the MS Vista typeface Corbel. However, the alternatives, such as Lucida Grande or Sans, Verdana, Helvetica, or Arial, appear much bigger, so the layout can look quite different when seen with one of those typefaces. That's why I chose Lucida Grande/Sans instead.
The header illustration
The “girl illustration” in my header, which sort of represents an idealized version of me, became my trademark, so it was clear to me that I should use her here, too, but with a different and more refined look. The previous girl illustration was inspired by a photo of me, that I used on my first blog. This time I didn't use an actual photo. I just tried to imagine how I wanted to see myself in the header. In the previous version I liked the shyness, which reflects me; this time I tried a more confident look with a seductive flair. Maybe it's the “me” that I want to be :)
My new header illustration, using a bit more contrast than on my previous site, and trying out a more confident expression.
Geeky bits & love
Maybe you have noticed this already in my footer, but in case you haven't, I've created a page where I answer a lot of rather *geeky* questions people might have about this site, together with some credits to people who have been a tremendous help during this design, code, and implementation journey.
RSS Feeds
With the new things going on I've also created some new RSS feeds to subscribe to. People who are currently subscribed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/veerlesblog are automatically subscribed now to receive ALL the content from this blog. If you do not want that, I suggest that you opt for the separate feeds found at:
Out with the old and in with the new
I hope you enjoy every pixel of it and its content. Oh, and before I forget, for those who are worried about all my old articles, and for those who believe this site is just plain rubbish and would love the old site back, here you go. From now on, maybe old, but not dead—just archived.
Comments
1 Sofie 10 May 2010
Netjes! Proficiat! :))
2 Andrei Petriceanu 10 May 2010
Well I’m absolutely blown away by your new design. I like your use of whitespace. The logo need some getting used to. But overall, great, balanced inspiring! keep it up!
3 Tom 10 May 2010
Mooi Veerle! Kan je trots op zijn. Veel succes.
4 Luka Kemperle 10 May 2010
Veerle,
as expected: wonderful!
5 Justin 10 May 2010
Brilliant. I can see why this design took you so long. I especially love the colour scheme and the header graphic is great. I do wonder how you come up with awesome ideas of conjuring up designs like these.
6 nicola "kOoLiNuS" losito 10 May 2010
well, your face in the footer reflecting the “idealized” version of yourself says that you are depicting who you ARE now, and not willing to be,
Great work, from my little angle of view and knowlegde, and glad to read about the motivation of this change. Thanks!
7 Paul Cotor 10 May 2010
I like this version more. It’s well thought and i can see you worked a lot on the little details. You did a very good job, keep doing it!
8 José Carlos Joaquim 10 May 2010
Well, you’re right, you can be really proud of the site, it’s awesome. Great job.
You managed to outdo the previous one, also great.
Congratulations
9 Davy Kestens 10 May 2010
Hi, I like what you have done with this place! The only thing that’s slightly bothering me are the fingers and arms of the drawn “you” in the header.. they seem so long?
10 Karel Uyttendaele 10 May 2010
Sublieme keuze van kleuren, fonts en layout!
11 Derek Mack 10 May 2010
Congratulations! It’s beautiful. Setting a benchmark once again.
12 Dalton Hurd 10 May 2010
Very amazing, Veerle! Only you can pull off such amazingly unique designs with great precision.
13 Rob 10 May 2010
You are belgiums best designer, by far!
Great coding too. I love the new look & color scheme.
14 Jaina 10 May 2010
Stunning redesign, really love how spacious it looks and feels.
15 Kev Adamson 10 May 2010
Love it :) It also looks fantastic in high contrast. Kudos.
16 Ivy 10 May 2010
Lovely new design!! I especially love how you have the high contrast and default versions to cater to different audiences. Should’ve thought of that for my blog!
Love the illustration and the font choice too!
17 Rik Hopkinson 10 May 2010
Amazing work as always - Love your creativeness and style! :)
18 Sondre K. Selnes 10 May 2010
Congratulations ! This is a stunning beautiful new design of your new blog ! I find your blog to be harmonic design that we all can learn from. Your blog and all your work is an inspiration. Thank you !
19 Mathias Bynens 10 May 2010
Looking beatiful, as always! I just wish you’d given the markup an update as well ;)
20 Savitri 10 May 2010
This is wonderful!!! I love the feel and how fluid it is. I do a small bit of web design and developing and I’d love to one day be a quarter as great as you :)
21 Veerle Pieters 10 May 2010
@Mathias Bynens
Not sure what to make of that? It is not because it isn’t HTML5 yet that my markup is old. I’m using a lot of new stuff! I’m not switching to HTML5 because it is *hip* now and all the cool kids do it. HTML5 would have given me more work and it took me already long enough as it is. What’s outdated exactly? I’m eager to learn from what I assume is an expert…
22 Recep Kütük 10 May 2010
There is design and then again there is “design”.. I believe I learned a lot from your previous posts and it seems there is quite a lot more to learn :)
Congratulations and a great “thank you” attached!
23 Mathias Bynens 10 May 2010
Hey Veerle, please don’t take my reaction the wrong way! I never said I was an expert at anything (although it is very nice of you to ‘assume’ I am one :]), and I wasn’t even talking about HTML5 either. I just noticed it took quite a while to load your site (only talking about *initial* load here) — about 3.5 seconds before anything but a blank page appeared. Surely, there must be room for improvements there.
You’re using 11 separate JavaScript files, and 4 CSS files; my guess would be that’s what causing the slowdown. Why not concatenate these together? It would certainly improve the user experience — the sooner people get to actually *see* your design, the better, right?
All I was trying to say is, when it comes to executing a web design, there’s more to it than successfully designing the whole thing. I’m sure I’m not telling you anything new here. :)
I hope that clarifies my statement. I really didn’t mean to be negative, more like a front-end fanboi (since that’s all I can do — I have no design skills whatsoever).
I forgot to mention I *really* like the keyboard navigation on your site!
24 Martijn 10 May 2010
Any reason for not creating a cookie when I switch to the high contrast version? It would seem to me like a logical move to display all pages in the alternative style once someone has made the switch.
(Also, any reason for not having the switch on the Handcrafted CSS book review?)
Loving the new style so far, due to the flexible width used by images and their labels the whole site feels less “boxed”.
25 tomg 10 May 2010
Really love the new site, and belgian art promotion.
Though it looks like you’re forcing external links to always open in the current window/tab, maybe it’s some tracking code that forces this?
26 Bjorgvin 10 May 2010
Congrats on the new launch. Very refreshing colors and style.
27 Greet 10 May 2010
Ik vind het mooi, alleen is het jammer dat je in het logo de regels van het perspectief niet gevolgd hebt; er zijn er verschillende maar je hebt er precies twee door elkaar toegepast waardoor het geheel er onregelmatig uitziet, it just doesn’t feel right. Jammer, maar in het kleine logo valt dat gelukkig niet zo op :)
28 Tom 10 May 2010
Very nice design - a bit crowded for a blog - but nice none the less.
29 Herko Coomans 10 May 2010
I’ve seen some snippets here and there, but this design is mindblowing -yet again. I’ve praised your previous designs everywhere as exemplar for detailed, personal and consistent designs, but you’ve actually set the bar higher. Congrats, and thanks for the continued inspiration!
30 Assunção Jr. 10 May 2010
Beutiful! wonderful!
31 Iwani Khalid 10 May 2010
Great content + timeless design + ftw :)
32 Kim Andre Fosslien Ottesen 10 May 2010
Absolutely brilliant, have waited weeks for this! You’ve really delivered on this one.
33 Kean 10 May 2010
I’m not too sure about the brown/grey background so far but I’m sure it will grow on me.
That is however only a small part and the level of detail and thought that has clearly gone into some of the smaller elements of the design surely marks it as a fantastic example of what is achievable on the web.
34 Veerle Pieters 10 May 2010
@Mathias Bynens
What exactly has that to do with you saying “Just wish you’d given the markup an update as well”? That things were a bit slow at that time is to be expected as the server was getting hammered (still is) with thousands of people visiting at the same time. It doesn’t take that long to load anyway. The fact that I have separate CSS files is because the site is set up so I can use themed articles. Not to be full of myself but if everybody wrote markup like mine the web would be a better place. This site is too complicated to handle with one CSS file. The tone of your answer was that I should learn new code, but you actually meant to say better combine stuff so it loads faster.
@Martijn
I didn’t have time to look and figure out how this is done with cookies. I’m a designer after all that can handle a bit of HTML/CSS :) The Handcrafted CSS book article is a themed one. I’ve set up the site that way so I can play around with every post if I want to.
@ all others,
thanks so much for the kind words! This took a lot of blood, sweat and tears, but I am glad it is done now. Now we can go back to writing tutorials and such :)
35 Bryan Garnett-Law 10 May 2010
I love your redesign, has such a wonderful feel to it. Congratulations on a fantastic, inspiring design.
36 [+_+] 10 May 2010
Schoon
37 Simon 10 May 2010
Wow Veerle, you’ve done it again!
38 Matthias 10 May 2010
Fantastic job, Veerle! Really loving it!
I enjoy that you quite never go with current trends and do your own thing and still achieve exceptional results.
I did noticed one minor technical glitch: In Safari (4.0.5) one can’t Cmd-click a link to open it in a new tab. Works in Firefox though. Both on a Mac.
Digging it! Supernice work!
39 Lena 10 May 2010
Hi Veerle!
Excellent work!!!!! Very beautiful design. You are so talent ;)
//Lena
40 Jonathan Kapaldo 10 May 2010
Great website design!! I loved the previous design, but this is even better. Thanks for your hard work and example to us web/graphic designers who need to design their own sites. You’re an inspiration!
41 ale 10 May 2010
woooow.. it’s great!
42 Pelardo 10 May 2010
Het ziet er super uit! Hopelijk komen er veel interessante artikels op de blog!
43 Jan Verhulst 10 May 2010
Veerle,
Ik vind dit ontwerp echt veel beter dan het vorige! Het is veel levendiger. Ook de aanpak in verschillende thema’s vind ik leuk.
Jan
44 Phil Coffman 10 May 2010
Really enjoying this evolution to your blog, well done Veerle!
45 Tom 10 May 2010
I know you put a lot of time in this redesign, but honestly I don’t like it. The structure is confusing. I’m sorry.
46 Chad Engle 10 May 2010
Veerle,
This new design is awesome. You haven’t left a thing out and everything is spot on. Well done!
47 Matt 10 May 2010
I like the use of more images for different sections - it makes the home page and (in particular the) Previous Posts section look very engaging.
Must say that ‘PREVIOUS’ and ‘posts’ look a little unbalanced in size to me.
Nice use of text-shadow on the comment numbers and form input boxes.
Also nice to see someone avoiding the use of rounded corners on everything! They can be over-used…
Not keen on the colour palette though - it’s too close for my taste. But then again it only my taste, and I seem to be in a minority. In particular the quote and reply buttons, given their size, are easy to miss.
(And no, there is nothing wrong with my eyesight (o; )
White space is good, although I thought so much of it in the comments section looks ok with reasonably long posts but no so good with lots of one liners.
48 Anton Peck 10 May 2010
Excellent work you’ve done here, Veerle (though I would have expected nothing less than that).
Congratulations on getting it live!
49 Michael Pitra 10 May 2010
Your new design looks great, but I am missing one important feature: The RSS feed does not give links to the original articles, just to the start page. This is somewhat useless ;)
50 Dave 10 May 2010
The new design is really amazing! every time i read it i spot some new design feature :)
51 Gabri 10 May 2010
this is pefection , awesome job Veerle .
I like the inspiration idea & the use of CSS3 stuff especially the fade boxes, but i “maybe” found a tiny problem the lifestream in the homepage just keeps loading & no data is retrieved.
52 Veerle Pieters 10 May 2010
@Matt
I’ve tried those with more contrast and it interferes with the design due to their repetitive nature. They aren’t major important, so I’m cool with them being less obvious.
That’s good feedback and I actually adjusted them to be a bit less wide.
@Michael Pitra
I am aware of this and I’m trying to get this fixed asap.
@Gabri
The life stream makes use of Yahoo pipes and I’m currently blocked there because you can only do 200 runs/10 minutes. If you do more you get blocked for an hour. Each time the hour is gone I’m blocked again because of too much traffic. I’ve mailed to get this raised but as long they don’t answer and raise it, it remains broken I’m afraid.
53 vanni 10 May 2010
i am in love!
54 Hitesh Chavda 10 May 2010
Very Inspired redesign.
55 Steven 10 May 2010
Love the new design. I remember the old design dearly as the first ever tutorial in photoshop as from this blog :)
56 Martin Staněk 10 May 2010
Hi! Nice design, however I find it very hard to read. Contrast between background and text color could be an accessibility issue. Also the text is very small. Like the layout though.
57 Paul Millar 10 May 2010
I have to be honest… This is one of the coolest comment sections I have ever seen. I love it!
Nice work, as always… I have major respect! Keep it up!
58 els 10 May 2010
I am gobsmacked.
Fantastisch Veerle.
Gefeliciteerd!
59 John Godwin 10 May 2010
Very nice Veerle, I especially like the background colour to the site, it works really well with the subtle action colours you have used. Congrats.
60 porcupine 10 May 2010
That’s lovely! Congrats Veerle.
There are so many unique corners to explore, so many ideas behind them. *Gasp*
Three questions:
1. How exactly did you achieve to archive the old version and to bring the new content in EE without changing your RSS feed?
2. I guess the comment area is left gravatar-less on purpose. What’s the design story behind it?
3. It must be a lot of work to update content in such a demanding blog. Do you use any desktop blogging software such as MarsEdit?
Once again, this is awesome work. Thanks for the inspiration.
61 Kelly 10 May 2010
I’m so excited to finally see the new design. I really like it. I love the colors, too - although I’m grateful for the high contrast version. I like the muted grays, but in the lower-contrast version, just seems a little harder to read.
And I really love the live comment preview. That’s pretty fun!
Beautiful work, as always!
62 Veerle Pieters 10 May 2010
@Martin Staněk
That is why there is an high contrast version on the article.
@porcupine
Feedburner
Because I don’t like what they do to the design. Most are ugly. They bring some bonus things like recognizing folks but that didn’t outweigh over the fact that they are ugly for most.
Yes I use MarsEdit to create all articles. Thanks for the kind words.
63 Frederik Raabye 10 May 2010
Beautiful work - once again… I can’t remember when I have spent so much time looking at details of a redesign.
64 Conor 10 May 2010
Great work! I really enjoy the layout and color palette. Fine craftsmanship here.
65 Roel 10 May 2010
We’re 2010. The web standards ‘movement’ is almost 7 years old. The vast majority of webdesigners writes clean and well-structured HTML and CSS now. Web standards have become a commodity. In my opinion, the web *has* become a better place and that’s a good thing!
I’m afraid that your front-end code is hardly any ‘better’ than that of any other professionally designed website nowadays. In fact, when looking at your HTML and CSS, any front-end developer would come to the conclusion that you’re a rather ‘conservative’ webdesigner. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that; nobody demands you to be an early adaptor and use modern technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 or WAI-ARIA, or that you minifiy and combine your CSS like Mathias suggests (it would make your site load a lot faster though) ;) It’s your design that shines! And isn’t that the most important thing to a creative webdesigner like yourself? I can tell that you’ve put a lot of offert in the redesign and I looks great. Congratulations!
66 Veerle Pieters 10 May 2010
@Roel
That’s why there still is so much crap out there. Just look around!
Patronizing much?
67 Roel 10 May 2010
That’s a rather strange interpretation of a compliment I tried to make to you ;)
68 wza 10 May 2010
@Roel what exactly is “conservative” about it? The markup looks great to me.
Eitherway, great job Veerle, smells fresh, looks fresh
69 Veerle Pieters 10 May 2010
@Roel
Basically you said I’m just good with colors but my coding skills not so much. They aren’t any ‘better’ than that of any other professionally designed website nowadays. I should up the ante and learn to use modern technologies. After that, you tone it down again by saying nothing wrong with that. First put somebody down and than “congratulations”. Sorry but that is just patronizing. I know I am no Jeremy Keith or others on his level.
70 jumptronic 10 May 2010
Nice Work, V! I love the V-Box icon/logo. It plays real nice in the comments thread. Suuuuuper scanable.
71 cottelletje 10 May 2010
Heel mooi werk ! Ik vind het een van de mooiste die ik al tegengekomen ben van Belgische designers !
72 Jackie 10 May 2010
I love it!
The best thing about your work is that it’s instantly ‘Veerle’. It’s a really different design which still looks of it’s time but without having jumped on the ‘vector style / web 2.0’ bandwagon where everything (though beautiful imho) is beginning to look the same.
Thanks for the inspiration as always!
73 Fabian Marchinko 10 May 2010
Wow Veerle! You are in a different league…I could stare at your site for hours.
74 michael Short 10 May 2010
Wonderful Veerle, simply amazing. The only Critique I have is that the title is just a bit too hard to see, it doesn’t stand out enough. but other than that its a great website :)
75 Philipp Rappold 10 May 2010
Amazing redesign!!! Just ordered a copy of Handcrafted CSS :)
76 Nana Yaw 11 May 2010
Great sense of color,well designed layout perfectly.You deserve an award.Nice logo.I will comment More later.
77 Jean-François Fortin 11 May 2010
My expectations were high… and are fulfilled. Nice work!
78 huphtur 11 May 2010
Hallo Veerle,
Received a 404 on the RFP article.
79 Narration 11 May 2010
Veerle, this is just terrific. And beauteous as well.
It is dense with your thinking in design itself - much to enjoy, much to absorb. Thank you for it all, Veerle, and for the amount your ongoing writing so often carries.
I really liked to see, also by the way, the poster from Basel. That is a very clever piece of work, I can tell you, from living there a recent seven years. As people seem to have commented elsewhere, it really catches a sense about the place that has also not changed. It is far from a linear illustration, though the sense of the Rhein side is also, well, just perfect. You would know it was Basel if you were never told.
You possibly might like to know that the element replacing one of the trees is a fountain from a completely different part of town—viewed from the sky downward, or perhaps inspired from looking down on a particular one from a certain place behind the SBB train station into the beginning of the Gündeli neighborhood. Basel has a number of these fountains, and and Markus Schneider found a real design way to get their presence in, integrated just right too like so much in that poster. Just an example of what he did.
Well, I like your 3.0 already, can you tell?? and one more Swiss-oriented thing, might be your new design mark, actually - somehow it connects with that new Herzog & de Meuron building for Vitra, at least for me.
Thank you again, Veerle, for something thoroughly in our new, present world.
;)
Narration
80 Rolando Murillo 11 May 2010
Veerle, you did it again. I love your work. Every piece of art you did have been an inspiration for me.
Seriously.
81 iAquarian 11 May 2010
I am loving your new leaner, cleaner-looking design (I really liked your previous design, but this more minimalist look takes my fancy even more). It really puts the focus on your content and images and makes following your blog an absolute pleasure, and as a EE user myself, it’s always great to see the limits you push the system to.
Fantastic work as always.
Helen
82 Tony 11 May 2010
I just wanted to say that your new site design is incredibly beautiful and inspirational to me. I am a front-end developer but you work makes me wish I was a designer :)
83 Irene 11 May 2010
Great! Veerle : )
Very clean & nice!
I couldn’t stop saying, “Wow!”
84 Kamwing 11 May 2010
sooooooooo nice!
love it!
85 Joe 11 May 2010
Unfortunately, this design does not seem like a “step up” from your last in my opinion. I do, however, enjoy your insightful tutorials so keep ‘em coming.
86 Michal Kozak 11 May 2010
If it’s even possible, I think I love your new design more than the last one :). Great job. I absolutely adore your work.
Although, as others mentioned, I can’t understand what do you force opening links in current tab/window. If I can remember correctly, it was the same with previous version of the site. Not exactly the best user experience, I’d say :).
87 B. Moore 11 May 2010
WOW!
I love version 3.0 I just wish the gray bg was just a shade darker and the high contrast is a nice touch it just to high for me. But it really doesn’t matter because I will always visit your site no matter what.
Question about your RSS? I noticed that the feed I subscribed to a while ago url is: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/veerlesblog and the new one points to: http://feeds.feedburner.com/veerlesblog The output looks the same I was just wanting to know if I should switch to the new one or if the old one is ok?
Keep up the BEAUTIFUL work and I can’t wait to here more about 3.0 and what ever new topics you have up your sleeve.
Later Dayzzz!
88 Mark 11 May 2010
Cracking design, Veerle.
Having saw the sneak peeks on Dribble, I knew you were onto a winner.
Congratulations!
89 Daniel 11 May 2010
very nice redesign, great idea Veerle. I like it. Greetings Daniel
90 Inge Lemahieu 11 May 2010
Echt knap gedaan! De ietwat fellere kleuren in de header contrasteren super met het zachte kleurgebruik van de rest van de pagina’s.
O, en ook fijn dat er een pagina Belgisch design is :-)
91 Jeroen 11 May 2010
Hoi Veerle! Je nieuwe website ziet er gelikt uit! Je maakt mooi gebruik van de nieuwste technieken, en je illustraties zijn echt strak! 1 klein kritisch zeikpuntje: De JPG-dithering in het topmenu ziet er niet heel charmant uit. :(
92 Martin 11 May 2010
Whoooohooo ... great redesign Veerle!
Good work!
93 TriangleJuice 11 May 2010
Hi Veerle,
just to say: great redesign! I especially like your personal icon.
Speaking of which: can I offer you my help with a small bug report:
Your comment icon has a “:hover”-quirk in WebKit browsers. I didn’t exactly look at your code, but I guess the “css-transform” of that icon should be altered.
94 Robert 11 May 2010
You are a queen of Belgian designers!
Amazing!
95 Shaun Butler 11 May 2010
Your new design is simply stunning. Beautiful use of Fade in / Out!
96 Sacha 11 May 2010
This is one of the best sites I’ve ever seen in terms of attention to detail. I love how everything fits together and it’s obvious that you’ve spent tons of time obsessing over every detail.
97 Jehad 11 May 2010
Congratulations on the launch of your new blog design!
Personally I prefer the previous version, but I realize the fact that improving a design such as V2 is a difficult task.
Could you please look into the RSS? I keep getting the same articles in Google Reader, articles which are already read.
98 Aaron Gustafson 11 May 2010
Gorgeous job darling (and Geert)!
99 paul de wouters 11 May 2010
wow, such attention to detail. It’s a masterpiece!
congratulations
Paul
100 Manuel Vidarte 11 May 2010
Wow Veerle! i love you, your work is beautiful and your blog has helped me in my graphic design work. You’re my heroine! ;)
greetings from Perú
101 Mason Stewart 11 May 2010
The redesign is great. I’m sure this was a huge project for you. Glad you get the satisfaction of launching a totally revamped site. Sometimes it feels like the redesign will never end. Cheers.
102 js 11 May 2010
Wow, this is a MAJOR improvement over the old site, I love it! And I was a big fan of the old one. This was worth the long wait.
103 Theo van Beurden 11 May 2010
I like it a lot!
104 Leah 11 May 2010
LOVE LOVE LOVE the new design and colors!
105 Jez 11 May 2010
I am sorry but I prefer the old site - the text is very hard to read and Safari freaks out on the local scroll function :(
106 Fabio 11 May 2010
fantastic level of details and nuances, love it! my pinpoint, anyway: I’d use outline:none on the main navigation links to avoid “the ants marching” effect, but it’s just me being obsessed with this thing..
super job!!
107 Sebastien 11 May 2010
Very new cool design ! :-))
108 Hank 11 May 2010
looks great but your RSS feed has republished itself at least 3 times. My reader keeps reporting new items from you but it’s the same old ones.
109 Giselle 11 May 2010
Loving the new design! It’s very soothing <3
110 Marco Bezoet de Bie 11 May 2010
Prachtige site…mooie inspiratie
111 chopeh 12 May 2010
I’m going to have to agree with everyone else here, it’s a marvelous re-design.
I’m desperately trying to give some constructive criticism… but it seems there really isn’t anything here to criticize.
Nope, nothing. I give up.
Damn you.
112 rapt00r 12 May 2010
The new design looks fantastic. Great job!
113 Yarden Refaeli 12 May 2010
Splendid!
I love your blog—and now its even better!
114 Albert 12 May 2010
Si abans era maco ara és acollonant. Amazing!! Gran dissenyadora!!
115 Simone 12 May 2010
Long time lurker has come forth to say ‘awesome’! Love the fresh take you have on the layout and design. The solution you came up with for splitting up your main categories works really well, I feel ‘treated’ when I enter each section. Especially the posters… lush.
I do despise how odd negative ones start putting people down when they succeed. Its a compliment really. They wouldn’t bother if you weren’t any good. :)
This amazing chick here has received all sorts of negative press just as she is finishing her 6 month journey (http://jessicawatson.com.au). As the Aussies would say: “Silly buggers!”
116 Veerle Pieters 12 May 2010
@huphtur
Thanks, fixed now.
@Michal Kozak
This is a bug caused by the company that is tracking how many visitors I get. This is a bug that only manifest itself with outside links in Safari (works in Firefox). I’m aware of it and mailed the company and they are looking into a solution. So this is NOT my doing. Forget about it in the old site.
@B. Moore
The right one is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/veerlesblog the o,ther one is something that Google (now owner of Feedburner) made us do for a while.
@Jehad
The RSS feed problem should now be solved. If you still have it a re-subscribe will fix it.
@ all others
Thanks once more for the kind words. I’m flabbergasted!
117 bob 12 May 2010
Really lovely design!
Especially like the high contrast version. You really did put your heart and soul into this revamp.
Lets hope for lots of fantastic content to do it justice!
p.s what happened to the ‘links’ section?
118 Ruud Van Bossche 12 May 2010
Veerle,
Heel mooi nieuw design. Ik ben vooral fan van de “old but colorful” look&feel. Echt mooi werk!
119 Veerle Pieters 12 May 2010
@bob
The old links are found here now (no longer updated). New ones are posted on delicious.
120 Brecht 12 May 2010
Great new design Veerle! Also loved your presentation at Multi-mania yesterday!
Great to see the person behind the succes!
121 Rene Kleizen 12 May 2010
Good job Veerle!
122 Debbie 12 May 2010
Dag Veerle, ik heb ook enorm uitgekeken naar je nieuwe blog, en het ziet er mooi uit !!!! De blog is anders, vernieuwend en inspirerend ! Proficiat.
123 cssdru 12 May 2010
Hi Veerle,
Great work! Simply amazing!
Nothing to add here at all except to say, CONGRATULATIONS.
Greetings,
124 Nelson 12 May 2010
I think the site looks great! How are you liking EE2 in comparison to the older version?
125 Marko Mihelcic 12 May 2010
Beautifull redesign, I love the small details around the site. Well done.
Cheers!
126 Grace Athayde 12 May 2010
I just love it. Congratulations, Veerle :)
127 Anette 13 May 2010
great blog
128 Veerle Pieters 13 May 2010
@Nelson
EE2 is great and is now mature enough to be used on a production site like this one. I’m biased about the interface of course as I designed it. It needs some more tweaking here and there but it is coming along quite nicely. I’ll talk about EE2 in a later post that explores building this site.
129 Johanna Hörrmann 13 May 2010
I’m impressed by this reconfiguration of your page - I especially like how you have created different pages for your different topics. Of all of them, I dig the concept of your inspiration stream the most. It’s an ongoing challenge for me to figure out how to present inspiring snippets without much ado, so this changing collage-type display is really appealing to me.
This “being ones worst client” sounds familiar to me, so kudos to you for actually finishing this design and getting it out there.
130 manolisf 14 May 2010
Functional & aesthetic impressive.
131 Darko 14 May 2010
Beautifull design!
132 Daryn St. Pierre 15 May 2010
Veerle, I’m always intrigued and inspired by all of your work. Your latest redesign is of course no exception. Everything is easy to navigate and sectioned off nicely. Traversing offers something new around every corner. You’re a pioneer in the world of forward thinkers.
133 Matt Kempster 15 May 2010
I knew everything about your new site would breathe of personality, and it does! Not bad at all really and so much attention to detail. Very inspiring :)
134 Cinzia 15 May 2010
Wow, your new design is marvellous ;-)
135 Brian Zerangue 16 May 2010
Absolutely wonderful work Veerle! Very cool.
136 shumaila 16 May 2010
You did an amazing job Veerle ! I can’t seem to leave the site for the last couple of hours.
I was wondering don’t you have any plan to write a book on Web Design & CSS ?
137 Tony 16 May 2010
Hi Veerle! I love the new design—congratulations! One tiny detail that I noticed is in the comment section. If I click to visit a commenter’s personal site and hit the back button to come back to yours, I have to re-open the comment section, even though the url is pointing to the right place: “http://veerle.duoh.com/design/article/veerles_blog_3.0#the-comments”
This is a minor detail though. You’ve really set a new standard for web design. Thank you for the inspiration.
138 hans 17 May 2010
i didn’t liked the old design it was too “girlish” but the new one is amazing! must have been a lot of work …
139 Veerle Pieters 17 May 2010
@shumaila
Glad to hear you find it so interesting:) There have been offers to write a book but the thing is that they are impossible to combine with doing client work. I would need to take a break from client work for like 6 months and that is something that financially doesn’t make sense.
@Tony
I’m aware of that bug and it is on my to fix list. Hope to have it fixed asap. Thanks for spotting that one :)
140 Sam Logan 17 May 2010
Wow! Veerle, I love it! Such a great design and full of wonderful features, well worth the wait!
141 Alexa 17 May 2010
Wow… been waiting for this for so long ;) All those hours paid off, I hope you’re proud :)
I’m impressed by the level of detail you’ve put in your redesign. The restructuring of content on the home page is so easy to navigate and find content. And it’s gorgeously designed- the branding seems to reflect your designs much more than the old. Your use of colour has always been a source of inspiration for my own work!
beautiful well thought out site structure and design <3
142 Martijn 18 May 2010
Erg onder de indruk van je nieuwe blog. Proficiat.
Ik ben geen zo’n fan van de website van Duoh maar dit is een pareltje.
143 Alex 18 May 2010
Wonderful redesign although it’s quite blending in on itself a slight bit too much. Love the details though! Very stylish! Well done!
144 TK Sheppard 18 May 2010
Love the redesign. I know exactly how you feel. You get bored of the old one, and have to redesign, even if your old theme was good. Besides, it’s a place where you get to try out whatever you want, cause it’s yours!
I stumbled upon your blog a couple months ago and found your tutorials as extremely helpful. I also found expression engine to be the most amazing blog application I’ve ever seen on the net. Since all my learning has been self taught, it takes me a while to get stuff done—so I was wondering if there’s a chance we might get an “expression engine for dummies” tutorial or something. I realize this would be a very extensive tutorials, making a basic working blog template, but I find myself not knowing how to go about finishing up my site. I have the ideas, it’s just the coding that gets confusing after a while. I think everyone wishes you could design something and have it just work =).
Anywho, love your site, love your tutorials. Thanks for everything!
145 Christy Correll 18 May 2010
Wow, - I am especially intrigued by the option to switch from high to low-contrast! Any chance you might tell us where the inspiration for this feature came from, or that you might create a tutorial on how to recreate this feature? Well done, love this site - can’t believe I just stumbled upon it - doh!
146 Wendy 19 May 2010
What a nice surprise to stop by your blog today and find the new design has launched. It’s lovely and comprehensive - without being overwhelmingly busy. I love your sense of style and look forward to more of your wonderful tutorials.
~Wendy
147 Nathan Archibald 20 May 2010
great redesign! I’m a big fan of grayish backgrounds. That Neutra font is amazing!
148 Jeff Deibel 21 May 2010
Solid design, it exudes a love of your craft! On a geeky note, I really like that you added a high contrast option. It’s the first time I’ve seen it and I hope to see it more in the future.
Way to think outside the Veerle cube!
149 Sheree Knapp 23 May 2010
Beautiful, inspiring, WOW…..I just love your new color scheme. I can’t decide which one I love more, the new design for your business site or your blog. I’ll just love them both. Beautiful use of colors, lines, contrast, and fonts. Teach me, teach me!!!!!
150 Harry G 26 May 2010
Hey I like the site. I’m interested as to why you chose Expression Engine. Have you considered free, open blogging software like Wordpress?
What advantages does EE give?
I’m a pretty novice web designer and have made a few sites using wp and am really impressed at its versatility and would just like to hear the opinion of an experienced designer.
151 Javi 27 May 2010
Thank you Veerle!.
...............................
now this is my second favourite site
after graphic-exchange.
your site really makes me stay in this world
...............................
152 Veerle Pieters 27 May 2010
@Harry G
The most important reason why I use ExpressionEngine is its flexibility. The system doesn’t dictate me how to use it so I don’t have to adapt my designs around it and I don’t need to learn PHP to let it do what I want.
@all others
Thanks again for the kind words!
153 Stacey 28 May 2010
It looks amazing! I haven’t been on here in a really long time, and had to leave a comment! I love this layout much better. You are an extremely talented designer and serve as major inspiration to this aspiring web design student.
154 Sara 01 Jun 2010
Great job Veerle!!
155 Asrar 03 Jun 2010
I love Neutraface.
156 Andreas Göb 04 Jun 2010
The old design was very nice, but the new is fantastic.
Not so colorful, more restrained.