Coming back to this site after taking a break of a couple of years, I decided it needed to redesign to better fit how I wanted to use it.
Brainstorming
The first part of any creative process is brainstorming. I have a 9×12 sketchbook that I use specifically for brainstorming. It’s filled with various lists and idea webs from different projects of mine.
As I’ve discussed before, I’m too ADHD to stick to one niche, so I decided to first start by listing all of the main topics I knew I’d post about. For me that was:
- Daily Life
- Homeschooling
- Hair, health, and beauty
- Art
- Books
From there, I looked at some of my favorite sites that post about similar topics. I specifically focused on 3 that covered drastically different topics that I knew I’d be blogging about(One homeschooling, one about rainbow hair and daily life, and one art vlogger). I found what I liked from each and compared them to what I liked and didn’t like about my already existing site.
Avatar
First thing I realized upon looking at my old site was that you couldn’t immediately see that I’m an artist just by looking at it. Yeah, I had “artist” in my little side bar, but it’s always better to show, not tell. I decided to take a page out of several of my favorite artist bloggers and vloggers, and make my Eevy avatar.
I knew I wanted a simple chibi style avatar that is immediately recognizable. I also figured changing my side bar picture of me to the #ToonMeChallenge picture I did for Instagram would help cement that I am an artist to any new visitors.
Menu Links
The next thing I did was simplify the categories I post in. I wrote out on a piece of paper what categories I currently had and everything I wanted to add or take away. I then wrote out the complete list of new categories, so I could have that right in front of me as I went through old posts.
I did the same thing with all of the pages linked in the top menu. I decided what the most efficient way was to link to the pages I wanted without having an overwhelming amount of links.
Site Theme
Even though I was comfortable with the theme I had for my site, I figured that if I was already going through the process of redesigning my site that I might as well experiment with a few different themes offered through the website service I use. I looked around for little while find one that would suit the look I wanted for the site. I tried a variety of drastically different ones to be sure of what I wanted.
Then, I went into photoshop and adjusted the dimensions of the different files I wanted to use to decide the best way to have everything.
While there’s still some things that I will probably change as I continue to use it, I am ultimately much happier with the design of my site than I was before I started.
