An interesting change of pace from the usual feminine design, designing & developing jeffcoles.com was a fresh & fun experience. This was one of the most masculine designs I’ve done so far. Some of my favorite things are:

• the text-graphic for the site’s name & tagline
• the use of sketch fonts as headers in sidebar
• the grungy facebook & twitter buttons
• the form to sign up to receive blog updates via email is styled in a fill-in-the-blank format
• the striped-gradient-to-solid background on the category links (in the sidebar)

Ok, so I have lots of favorites…

In addition to the stuff I mentioned above, I also added Recent Posts to the sidebar & Jeff’s latest tweets. And I used the fabulous Thesis framework for WordPress.

See the live site → jeffcoles.com

Jeff Coles is a Commerical Real Estate Broker in Bethesda, MD. You can read more about him at his blog: Jeff Coles, The Apartment Broker.

Marlon & Syreeta Smith needed a logo & blog design for their new venture: Covenant Keepers, Inc. Once we finished their logo design, it was time to move on → to the blog design. Marlon & Syreeta had a clear vision for their blog & already had the various sections laid out – from the different categories to the different pages. The couple wanted the blog to be called Marlon & Syreeta’s Blog, to give it that personal feeling. We all agreed that Thesis should be used as the basic framework for the site. Marlon picked his color {blue}, Syreeta picked her color {cranberry} & the design went from there.

Marlon & Syreeta’s Vision Statement: To encourage, educate and empower newlywed couples, engaged couples and those dating with Biblical principles and real-life strategies for experiencing healthy marriages with a 0% divorce rate.

In addition to the blog’s graphics & layout, we integrated social media, created custom questionnaires, installed google analytics, and set up email subscription to the blog’s feed. I also helped Marlon & Syreeta with adding content to their site & guided them through the basics of using WordPress.

See the live site → MarlonandSyreeta.com

Jim DeBetta is a retail & invention expert, who mentors and coaches entrepreneurs and inventors from their initial sketches to selling their final product to major retailers. As a coach and mentor to entrepreneurs and inventors, a blog is very important to DeBetta’s enterprise. While his main site, www.jimdebetta.com, was undergoing a redesign with its original web designer, Jim turned to award-winning small & independent business coach & advocate, Donna Maria Coles Johnson, for her professional blogging opinion.

Deciding to separate Jim’s blog from his main site & have his blog located at www.thejimdebettablog.com, Donna Maria suggested he use the Thesis theme for WordPress [that is where I fit into the picture (wondering where I was going with all this?)]. Jim & Donna Maria approached me wanting a customization of Thesis with a clean look. So with Donna Maria as Jim’s consultant, we worked together to create www.thejimdebettablog.com:

Some of the customizations include:

• date in the header
• social network icons with links in the header
• navigation & search bar
• subtle drop shadow on the rotating photo area in right sidebar
• sponsor area in sidebar
• feed of most recent tweets from twitter
• subscription in sidebar
• set-up and styling of sidebar widgets
• set-up and styling of post header
• comment count bubble
• & more!

Booth Outfitters provides specialized branding services to small businesses with their Brand Investments, which range from banners and table covers (hence the name Booth Outfitters) to digital canvas prints, t-shirts and towels. The owner, entrepreneur Ishmael Holmes, approached me wanting a header design for his blog. He already had his logo, tagline and was using thesis (one of the best wordpress themes in my opinion) and only required a custom header and some minor customizations (like moving the blog’s navigation below the header). Here’s the end result & what is currently up at boothoutfitters.com:

And, since sometimes I feel limited if I only design just one mock-up, I created three header mock-ups for Booth Outfitters and Ishmael ended up taking two of them, here’s the other one:

Last week, I launched a new site for Donna Maria of Indie Business Media, LLC (yes, we’ve been working on a lot of stuff together lately). The new site is for a series of conferences she’s leading in early 2010. What’s the conference about? Here it is straight from TheMediaIsYou.com:

Announcing The Media Is Y-O-U, a one-day intensive, hands on social media training workshop designed especially for Indies! If you’re an Indie Business owner, you know how important it is to use the Internet to spread the word about your products and services. Today, doing that is easier than ever with my one-day intensive, hands on “The Media is You” training program.

Donna Maria is holding The Media Is Y-O-U conferences in Atlanta, Chicago, New York City & San Francisco. She not only needed a site to get the word out, but also for conference registration & to encourage interaction among conference registrants.

For this site, I customized the Thesis theme for WordPress.