I once read, “You should know the lingo and exactly what you want BEFORE talking to your blog designer.”
Oops. My bad.
Cue Renee, the amazing mind behind Studio Bold.
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| Check out her impressive portfolio |
This poor woman, who can speak in code like she is in Matrix, had to deal with me, someone who is just getting the hang of this whole dial up thing…wait…what? Oh, we don’t have that anymore? I mean just getting the hang of our wireless router.
Many of our email conversations looked like this:
Jean: “Renee, I want to have pretty pictures and white behind my words, photos of my kids, and those little square things with f and t on them.”
Renee: “I know exactly what you mean. I will just have to ref:a=>:http:skhnfvkdbgfjaldfb:>ref>ahttp:jpg. Then you may need to ____ (insert more Mark Zuckerberg code here) Sound good?”
Jean: “I have no idea what you are talking about, but will I have those fun square things?”
Renee: “Yes. It’s exciting!” (While in her head thinking, why, why, why did she win the makeover?)
Renee designed this incredible new header, logo, social icons, favicon, button, and more from my want list of vague descriptions and a few birth announcements with patterns and color schemes I found online.
She is also a mommy to two boys, almost exactly the same ages as mine, so we had an understanding. We both have no free time, drink lots of vodka, and she used the insanity that is my life to help with the design. For example, see how the words in my logo are off balance? Very representative of my life. Here are more snippets from our emails:
“Oh man, I just got a call from my son’s school and he got his head stuck between the wall and the urinal!”
“Sorry I didn’t get back to you today, we were at a 12 hour wedding with my mom’s crazy Italian side of the family and the ambulance, police, and mafia members were blocking our car in.”
“My son just threw a book at his brother’s head and now his glasses are broken!”
“My entire family is sick and our house was so covered in throw up we had to just walk away and buy a new house.”
(Note: Two of those stories are completely true and the other 2 are based on truths.)
Here is a before shot
And you are looking at the after.
Even at the last minute today I emailed Renee and said, "Wow, how cool would it be (hint, hint) if I had an Autism ribbon made of my blog colors, rather than the rainbow I have now that doesn't match." And voila, 2 minutes later, that beauty of a ribbon you see now in my sidebar was in my inbox!
When Renee shared she was going to use before and after screen shots on her redesign post I said, "Cool, I want to, but don't know how...*whimper, sad puppy style*...can you share?" Just like in high school group projects, I let the others do the work and reap the benefits at the last minute! Sorry Renee, you know how much I appreciate you, and I sincerely hope you don't have to work with people as computer and technology illiterate as me.
One last note: I won a blog redesign about a year ago and the designer never made good on her end of the deal. I was really bummed until I won this SITS and Studio Bold contest. Believe in Karma folks…believe in Karma.
Thank you SITS and Studio Bold. I feel very at home on my blog now!
Please also stop by Renee's blog to see her fabulous post about her work on this design. Her explanation and recap of us working together is way more professional than mine!
