New Design For Dietriffic
Strangely, straight after the release of Lucid, I was given the task of redesigning the healthy eating blog, Dietriffic. Practice makes perfect, and everytime I design a blog I always learn something new.
The task was fairly straightforward, Melanie (the owner), wanted something clean and modern, with somewhere for ads. Browsing yesterday, I just happened to notice Brian Gardner making available his most recent theme, Silhouette. With three columns, I figured it would provide a good base for me to work off.
Changes
The basic theme by Brian is beautiful, but it didn’t have the right look for a blog giving dietary advice. Therefore, I lightened the look with an icy blue, complimented by a soft red and grey. Fonts were changed, column widths, borders, the comments section, the display of blockquotes, and a few other things.
One area of the theme I didn’t like, and had to change, was how it displayed archived posts and search results. It was displaying full posts everywhere, which is not a good SEO tactic.
At the end of the day though, what really matters when you redesign a site is not, do I like it, but does the owner like it? Thankfully, Melanie seems very happy with the new look. The only thing left to do now, is a possible logo design to help with branding. This isn’t a strong point for me, so I’d appreciate any input, or help with this if you’re willing to offer it.
Also, if you take the time to check out Dietriffic, please come back and tell me what you think of the design. Melanie is a qualified dietitian, and she does an excellent job providing free advice that most of us could do with paying attention to 
Paying for a theme
Forking out $250-$500 or more for a blog design, can sometimes appear a little steep for a new blogger, especially when it’s not a business venture.
If you like your current theme (or another theme), but you’d like to have it ‘personalised’, contact me.
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Comments
8 Responses to “New Design For Dietriffic”
Share your thoughts...
Really love my new site design Armen!!!
IOU!
You now seem to have chenged the logo since this post - the new Dietriffic logo looks much better. Kind of balances the page a little.
Melanie - Glad to be able to help, it’s a great blog.
Health Hacker - Yeah, I just had to think up something appropriate that would help brand the site. I’m glad you like it.
Oddly, I like the blue header.
Good work Armen. I think the logo needs a little refreshing and if you’d like any advice I’m more than happy to help out.
David - I wouldn’t want to take up any of your time, but if you had a few basic pointers or something, then I’d definately appreciate it.
At first glance, the logo appears very heavy.
I know the tag line includes the word ‘weighty’, but I think you should take the opposite approach for a diet site and make use of a logo that’s light in feel.
You can achieve this by adding some breathing space above and below, and also increasing the letterspacing.
Did you have any other ideas during the design process? If so it’d be great to have a look.
David - I trust your judgment more than mine, so I’ll see about adding more space. It’ll have to wait till Friday though, as I have a visitor staying with me, and I don’t have much time.
No other ideas. I’m not very good with ideas for logos, so it was actually the client that relayed her thoughts for a logo to me. I designed it and chose the fonts.
The design for Dietriffic is excellent. I just loaded the site in FireFox and it looks perfect!