Good afternoon,

In short, I’m looking to finally move my year old blog to a new domain in conjunction with a new Wordpress-based theme that is easy to navigate whilst being light on code, fast loading, and abides by web standards,

I have never sought a bespoke design previously and thus have little idea as to exact charging. The theme should be quite simple, with minimal time needed for graphics and the like. Furthermore, in using Wordpress as a base, even less work is needed (hopefully). Clearly it would ideal if a person or persons would like to take this on as a part-time/voluntary project; there’s no strict timescale to work to (late May).

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I’ve been speaking with Ryan Arrowsmith and Justin Palmer (of Encytemedia fame). Unfortunately, the former is overloaded with other projects and the latter is not currently looking for work.

I’ve drawn up a few breakdowns of the design idea I've had. The images have been uploaded to my Flickr account and are linked at the very end of this email.

The images themselves are not indicative of the final design I’m after, but rather a rough idea into which people have full and free reign to input your own design flair and initiative.

In essence I should think the structure of the theme would be very similar to Hemmingway, yet with the content divided up into separate Ajax shelves that display and hide content at a click of the mouse. In so doing I’ll be able to keep most of the content and navigation on the main page, within the screen area, minimising the need to scroll around.

You will note from the images I've drawn up below that I'd love to have the two most recent posts appear in the main content area (image only; full articles displayed on a different page once the title image is clicked). The title images I’ve been using for a few months are all 420px by 120px so padding and styling, etc, would have to be built around this issue.

I've yet to create an image of the bottom most shelf and the content contained within it. Essentially it would be half Flickr images (as per my current blog via FlickRSS), and the other half displaying album covers of artists I've recently listened to on Last.fm.

Depending on whether any of you have the time and are happy to give this project some thought, I can be contacted in this thread or at home on cknott20 [at] hotmail [dot] com. I can also be contacted through MSN Messenger using the latter email should you so wish.

Hopefully the images I’ve drawn up give a rough idea of what I'm looking for from a theme. It's completely greyscale at the moment, but the implementation of graphics and colours, etc, would be completely up to you. I would be looking for something with a lot of white space – possibly with each shelve highlighting in a different colour across the width of the page upon mouse over, much like a rainbow of sorts.

Main Page
http://flickr.com/photos/cknott20/363382706

Categories
http://flickr.com/photos/cknott20/363382707

Recent Posts & Comments
http://flickr.com/photos/cknott20/363382710

(It would also be nice to add an extra content area that sources the RSS feeds of some of the blogs and websites I view – displaying headings and perhaps three lines of four entries for each, perhaps)

I’ve been browsing around the Internet for similar sites and designs to provide some inspiration. http://www.eyegix.com has proven to be very close to what I’m looking for and far less cluttered and bulky than my original sketches. Minimal use of graphics and good design through CSS are very positive factors in any proposed design.

http://www.tomharman.co.uk and http://dfckr.com are also very nice sites.

My blog in its current guise can be found at dialectic.org.uk/ck.

If anyone out there would be interested in taking on such a project, please don’t hesitate to let me know.
Kind Regards,

Craig Knott

"I have never sought a bespoke design previously and thus have little idea as to exact charging."

This blog entry can shed some light on what to expect.

Also, to help you clarify your needs, here is a client survey which you can fill out and submit to your web producer. From there, the producer can write up a creative brief so you both understand what the project is all about.

Contact me if you would like further assistance with this project.

Carla

CK: Shoot me an email. bjclark .at. scidept dot com

Thank you chaps and chapesses. Contacts made accordingly.