Happy New Year!
I’m pleased to finally introduce you to Agent Athletica’s brand new look! After nearly 5(!!) years of blogging, this revision marks my 4th complete site redesign. Each revision is a huge undertaking, but is important work that helps my site keep pace with industry standards and better align with the continued evolution of my content.
I fully customized the design on my own using a theme from Feast Design Co. They have the best blog themes I’ve ever found. They’re extremely flexible, beautiful, and user-friendly. Although they’re geared toward food bloggers, I love both themes I’ve purchased from them. I designed my own graphic elements using Adobe Illustrator, with the exception of the mountain motif, which was carried over from my previous design.
My primary goal for this redesign was to make the site more visually focused. This meant reducing or eliminating visually distracting elements, like shrinking the header size and removing the sidebar. I place more of an emphasis on images in my content than ever, and I want my layout to reflect that. The new layout places visual content front and center in a more striking way. The end result turned out much more streamlined and focused than any of my previous designs. The biggest changes are in the desktop view, which is where I see the most improvement.
Besides the layout changes, I updated the site’s color scheme to better coordinate with the natural elements in my photos. Though I wanted to like the shade of teal in my previous site design, it just didn’t go with pine forests and sandstone. The new colors are also less prominent, which is an intentional change to keep the focus on my content.
Although most of the changes are complete, I still have a lot of elements to tweak over the next several weeks. Any time you switch website layouts, things always break and existing content needs to be optimized. For example, I want to continue improving overall navigation, which has been a weak spot on my site for quite a while now. I also plan to improve the appearance and quality of category-based pages, especially my reviews page. In other words, expect to continue seeing smaller changes trickle in for a little while.
If you have feedback, I’d love to hear what you think about the new site!
I think it’s great that you continue to work on improving the aesthetics of your blog. In this case, my older eyes are having a harder time reading the text of the top level menus, the post date/time/leave a comment link and the actual text of the blog entry. The contrast between the white background and the greyish font isn’t enough for me to comfortably read the text.
I do like the new Agent Athletica logo at the top.
Thanks for the suggestion! I was actually thinking of changing that color anyway. I’ll try out some things with a bit sharper contrast. :)
So crisp, I love it!
This looks fantastic! It’s clean and uncluttered and your photos take center stage.
However, I do agree with Kristin about the light gray color. I find it hard to read, especially if reading on my phone. This color seems to be a trend on a lot of blogs these days. However, here it’s just headings, not the main text. So I’m ok with that.
Thanks Kate! I’m going to experiment with some other colors instead of the light grey and see if I can come up with something a little better.
Love the new look! Such a fresh update!
I love it. Aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Reminds me of “does it spark joy?” It’s clean, minimal, and modern ❤️👍🏻