Archive for the ‘Portfolio’ Category
| 27 Jan 2008 |
Wordpress Design for MoneyBites.com – Make money online blog |
More and more people contact me to design them wordpress themes for their Make money online niche blogs. Quite many of them would want the design done for the price of 30-50$, but those people get a big NO as a reply.
My current fee for a custom wordpress design is 170$, you can’t say that i overcharge, i saw designs that cost 400-500$ and they can’t match the quality of my designs.
On wednesday Max Teitelbaum contacted me to design a wordpress theme for his new blog: MoneyBites.com
He supplied the icon in front of the logo and told me that he wants space for 125×12px ads, and a spot for subscriptions to his feed along with the feedburner widgets integrated.
He also specified that he wants the design to be AD-Optimised and the main colors should be silver and blue along with a web 2.0 feel.
Overview of the Logo:
The Icon was supplied by the customer, he supplied 2 versions of the icon: a silver one and a gold one. I decided to use the silver one to fit the concept of the top-part of the design.
The main font that i used is Myriad Roman Font along with the silver gradient from the web 2.0 gradient pack made by dezinerfolio and a few font style tweaks.
The main idea was to create a sleek logo that would fit the top part of the design that would blend in perfectly with the other elements.
Overview of the design:
The customer requested that i put recent posts and popular posts above the content. Said and done. I implemented the icons provided by the customer in the sidebar elements.
At the posts i used a bit green for the tags and the posted by lines to have some diversity and to not create color blindness to the visitor.
The other icons i used are the icons from FAMFAMFAM (his icons are widely used on the web and they are used by popular sites like stumbleupon also)
In the footer i put a grey bar with 40% opacity(what do you know? it turned out great) On the left part i put the golden icon of the website and on the right part the powered by wordpress line(the font is arial).
The job was completed within 48 hours(including revisions), this is the bad part of working with customers who live in a time zone far away from you. You can talk to them once, max twice a day.
| 13 Jan 2008 |
Custom wordpress theme for an atheist blog |
You can check out a live preview by clicking HERE
Last week i was hired by aufordboy to design and code a Custom Wordpress template for an atheist blog, when we set the details he specified that he wants something similar to the 15 year old entrepreneur theme
From the start i told him that i can’t design him a theme that will look exactly the same as a previous theme of mine. He told me the specifications, but most of all requested that the theme should be a 3 column theme( 1 sidebar on the left, one on the right and in the center the content).
Here are the details he gave me about the project:
- Prefer 3 columns (with main content in middle) but will consider 2 column designs. Would like “custom pages” navigation bar to be under (or integrated in) the header image.
- For Wordpress 2.3
- Coded
- XHTML/CSS valid
- tested on FF,IE6/7,Safari,Opera
- widget ready for sidebar and footer
- custom header image (something for an atheist website)
After he gave me these details i asked him about the logo, that what would he prefer? a cross or something or a character. We agreed that as a main detail i will use a character. I went over to Istockphoto and found a great vector image that i used along with atheist taglines like: “God? Heaven? Hell? Afterlife?” , also after the timestamp on posts i put an atheist symbol(clean, sharp looking).
As you can see in the previews the theme looks very clean, the arrangement of the elements and the navigation bar make it unique.
As he requested the footer(where recent posts/comments and ads are) is widget ready along with the sidebar.
When i showed him a preview of the theme he loved it and accepted that it looks better as a 2 column theme(i explained that if i add one more column on the right the content will be in a very tight space)
This project went really smooth, and all this thanks to the cooperation of the customer and the professionalism with which he threated the project.
| 3 Dec 2007 |
My first forum design |
Yep, last friday the owner of www.mariogame.info hired em to do a stylish design for his mario forum. He wanted me to incorporate the logo on the front page….well i tried and i tried and it didn’t look good so i decided to design a custom logo.
The design is extremely styleish and is a combination of red/grey/white and teal gradient. The only thing that i used from the old site was the background gradient(just so that it would contain an element from the main page).
At first i wanted to make a dark design with a big black gradient header and for the main colors to use white+grey+black and maybe some green along with the logo provided by him.
But when i made a part of the design i realized that green won’t fit the design and it won’t look good so i deleted everything and started from beginning. So i used as a background the gradient from main page and created the main structure.
We live in the XXI century! Web 2.0 is dominating on the www so i added stripes and used web 2.0 gradients.
The main fonts i used are Arial, Tahoma, Verdana and for the logo Century Gothic (this is one of my favorite fonts).
As main icons i incorporated Mario and Toad.
He was very satisfied with my work and i’m glad that the theme turned out so good(even better than i expected).
I lost quite many forum design jobs because i didn’t have forum designs in my portfolio. That won’t be a problem anymore since i added this design to my portfolio and hopefully i will catch more forum design jobs.
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Yesterday the owner contacted me asking for the NON watermarked files. I was like wtf? so i pmed him back showing him how to remove the watermark from the PSD file. He PM’ed me back saying that the coder told him that the psd contains only one layer and the watermark can’t be removed.
My reply was: “the psd has only 1 layer? what program is he using? MS paint?”
I would be afraid to give my design to a coder like that, lol. I just hope he won’t mess up my design, you know what they say: “everything is ok if it turns out well at the end”
If you want to check out other parts of the design(postbit, threadbit) visit http://thaslayer.com/view/index.php?list=11
| 30 Nov 2007 |
Design for ultimateblogdirectory.com |
Last week i was hired to make a directory design for www.ultimateblogdirectory.com The old design looked
like a design from ‘95. The client wanted something fresh yet web 2.0 and simple(check picture). First of all i started thinking about a color combination so i decided to use a combination of green/blue/yellow/grey/orange and the usual stripes.
Check out his preferences:
It needs to be 3 column with the right and left columns available for adds and sponsored links.
Center colum would have categories, on the front page the center should have a place for ads or featured sites above the categories.
It should be a rounded web 2.0 style.
At the menu i designed a light blue hover that really blends into the design.
For the logo i used a cut lemon and added mirror effect to it, making it the symbol of the directory.
The coder didn’t design it quite as it is in my design, but in my opinion he did a good job although he omissed some elements, but 2 things that really matter are that the theme is XHTML and CSS valid 
You can check out a working demo at www.ultimateblogdirectory.com
| 21 Oct 2007 |
Styleicious Web 2.0 Wordpress template arriving on 24th october! |
How did the Styleicious template get created?
Well yesterday and today i didn’t have much custom work to do, i finished all the custom designs that had to be finished and i got myself a big mug of coffee and yesterday night i started working on the template. The template is finished(the design itself) BUT to make sure everyone likes it and to improve it more i
posted it on Digitalpoint for some reviews and suggestions. You can check out the thread at Stylicious Reviews The template has a very sleek look, and will have implemented lots of exciting plugins and features.
Lets check them out more detailed:
great looking web 2.0-ish logo
2 columns for you to have place to put extra content
WidgetBucks and Adsense READY!
widgetized sidebars
AJAX rating system
Thread tags
Tag Cloud
Recent posts and recent comments display
AJAX based Poll system integrated
great looking post display and commenting system
XHTML & CSS Valid
Great hover effects!
And last but not least : it will be 100% compatible with Wordpress v 2.3!
You will be able to download the template starting from 24th October(Wednesday), if the release gets delayed you can be sure that i will let you know.
Update(25th october):
The release is delayed to 30th october due to some problems. I had some problems at designing, but eventually everything came out right. The template is being coded as we speak, lets hope we won’t have any more problems.
Update(30th october):
The release is further delayed due to coding problems(problem with the coder…needed to change him). But now i’m working with a good friend who tends to add more ajax features to it.
Read more in The Delay Thread
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If you are interested in hiring me for a custom job feel free to send an email to slayer@webarea.ro
| 13 Oct 2007 |
Oceanblue – a sleek web 2.0 wordpress theme COMMING THIS AUTUMN! |
I recently started working on a new wordpress theme that i will release for free, it will be very web 2.0 styled and will be packed with lots of plugins and ajax features.
It will have 1 column on the left side and will look very sleek and professional.
I will NOT put any sponsored links on the theme, only a link-back to my blog as usual.
Any feature suggestions are welcome, regardless to say that the template will be wordpress 2.3 compatibile!
| 27 Sep 2007 |
Logo design for WebArea.ro |
I got really bored of the default logo modified so i decided to make a special 
web 2.0 looking but still trendy and professional logo for my webmaster forum . So i started checking fonts and gradients and well..it took me quite a lot till i found my desired fonts and I imagined a concept in my head, and then i started working on it. Grey and bright grey variations with a blue bar so i needed to think something 
that would fit. Blue is a must in a context like this, but i wasn’t really sure about the other color, i tried from red to white but none really it except orange so i went with it, i combined all together and edited the “w” and the “b” antennas and in my opinion it turned out unique, and brandable.
Any comments are welcome! 
| 27 Jul 2007 |
Sneak peak of the new template for nordicbots |
As promised here’s a preview of the templatye i made for nordicbots.com new website, you will be able to check out the full version as soon as the template will be coded. I had some discussions with Petyyy and its most probable that i will have to do some changes(because of the many elements in the box-es). Maybe dropdown menu’s, maybe AJAX, this will be decided later.The template is pretty web 2.0-ish(not completely). I really like green(mostly apple green) its one of my favorite colors so thats why i chose it, in my opinion the design turned out better than i expected meaning that i’m very satisfied also with it. What matters is that nordicbots.com will have a new and fresh face . The nordicbots staff wants to keep the website simple but to make the elements visible as possible and to have a user friendly navigation bar. As soon as some updates pop up you guys will be the first to know so stick around because there are plenty more interesting things to find out
| 25 Jul 2007 |
Doing Open Source work – New design for nordicbots |
Well, yeah…yesterday when talking to soczol i offered my services for free. Said and done. What would he like?…a “bright fresh design” he sais. 
I start asking him about color combinations and stuff, he encourages me “do it as you like, anything better than our current design is welcome”. For a designer its pretty hard to fulfill the client’s requests if he gets so few details and no sketch. I started working on the design yesterday, made the top part of the page(the header) and today i added the news elements and the footer, and of course i showed it to him. He totally liked it and gave me a GO to finish the template.
What color combinations did i use?
I used bright green and bright gray combinations with white background. It looks pretty web 2.0-ish but still it aint completely web 2.0 . Hopefully i will finish it today and tomorrow i will post the design i made, and then you can compare the old design to the new one
