Hi. Remember me? I’ve been missing in action lately, but it’s been for a good reason. Besides all the awesome client work I’ve been working on, I’ve also been hard at work redesigning the Blue Turtle Graphics website. The last redesign took place back in June of 2009 and I felt it was time to revamp the look. Why you ask? Besides just growing tired of the old design, I really wanted to power the whole site with WordPress. You see, the old design was built as a static xHTML and CSS website, meaning there was no Content Management System (CMS), which makes for editing the text and photos of my site a real pain. The blog itself was powered by WordPress, but I’ve been wanting for a long time to make the whole site editable through the awesomeness that is WordPress. Another reason for the redesign is that the old site (and blog) was at the blueturtlegraphics.NET domain. Not sure if you’ve noticed but this new site is located at blueturtlegraphics.COM. I purchased the .COM version of my domain over a year and a half ago and had it redirecting to the .NET. Instead of having to move all the old site files over to the new domain, I decided ‘what better time to redesign than now and switch to the new domain?’ So, you see, there are all sorts of fun and exciting things happening here!

The new Blue Turtle Graphics website

The previous Blue Turtle Graphics website

This redesign provided me with an opportunity to add some enhancements to the new site. Right off the bat, you will notice the slideshow displaying various works from our logo, print and web portfolio. Also added are two new main navigation pages: Services and FAQs. I’ve expanded the services page as well as included a link to my design process. The FAQ page displays commonly asked questions I get from my clients. There are only a few items on this page right now, but I plan to add to it and update it often. The portfolio pages for logo design and graphic design haven’t changed much, but for the web design portfolio, I expanded it. When you click on the thumbnail, it brings up a new page for that web project with additional details about ‘what we did’, a full screenshot (or two) of the site as well as any client testimonials that apply to those projects. For you geeks, the web portfolio section was done with WordPress custom post types and meta boxes. For the non-geeks, this means I can upload a thumbnail, full-size image, testimonial and all the details for a web project from just one WordPress post and whoila! it’s added to the portfolio just like that. This makes my life so much simpler!

The rest of the site is similar in content, just a new, fresher layout. I moved my newsletter signup (make sure you signup!)  and social links to the footer as well as have my latest tweet display in the bottom right corner. You may also notice that the sea turtle in my logo has been tweaked slightly, I created a more graphic/geometric flower that rests on the back of his shell. I use this new flower as a repeating pattern on the home page behind the tagline on the right side of the slideshow. I like having this additional element to use here and there throughout our design materials.

In addition to the redesign, I’ve added several new client projects to the logo, graphic and web portfolios. Since I knew I would be redesigning my site, I’ve held off from updating the portfolio for the past several months. There’s a lot of new stuff there, so make sure you check it out!

So, let me know what you think about the new website…any feedback is welcome. Make sure you check out our new twitter background as well as Facebook graphics to match.