New year, new design. I’ve been wanting to redesign the site for a few months now with five goals in mind:

• Strip it down and make it more minimal
• Improve typography
• Make it responsive
• Allow for bigger images
• Allow for non-image posts

This new design addresses all five.

Because I don’t have very much free time these days, I started with a purchased theme and modified it to my liking. Visually, I simplified it a great deal. Some might think it’s too minimal, maybe even boring, but I think it serves its purpose well. The typography is greatly improved. The entire site is set in Proxima Nova, which at larger sizes is a pleasure read. No more tiny type. The main text is now set at a large size with spacious leading to make reading easier.

Now that mobile devices are a large part of everyday life, I wanted the site to be responsive. Unlike the previous design, this new design presents an optimal viewing experience on a phone, tablet, and desktop browser.

It also allows for more flexibility in terms of post formats. The previous design I was constrained within a 450px column for the images, so it didn’t allow for larger images. With the new design I can post images up to 690px wide. Bigger images means more details. I also want to make more posts that are just text, for example quotes or this post. This single column design presents text only posts in a better way. Videos also work well, so expect to see more video posts in the future.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with this new design, and I think you will be as well. I’ve tested it as much as I could, but I’d love to hear from you folks on what you think and if you see any issues.

Enjoy.