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Yesterday I stumbled upon Pliggs.com through the newly launch Publicity Wheel, which I recently implemented in the advertisements block.

After reading a few posts and browsing for a short while it soon became apparent that the content was brilliant but the look of the site (mainly just the header, but a key branding and visual point to all visitors) was not doing the site any justice, and I felt inclined to help add a little extra professionalism to the site.

Pliggs.com Previous Header

Here is a screen shot of the ordinal header..

As you can see the original header is quite blocky, and the quality of the jpeg used was very low. Using low quality jpeg’s can drastically improve your website loading time, but if you are optimising your website images it should not be any problem using high quality or maximum quality images.

To add insult to injury the low quality also makes the image look as if it has been scanned.

I understand how hard photoshop can be for those just starting with the tool and with a free hour to amuse myself I decided to put my time and skills to good use and spend a short while on refining the logo.

My intentions were never to change the logo, as that is a defining feature in this well-established community but to work with what’s there. With that said the logo shape and colour is very attractive and has a strong branding power to it and does not need changing.

After about and hour I managed to finalise some designs..

The Designs

I came up with 4 different variations of the same design each with it’s own little changes, as follows:

Design 1

Design 2

Design 3

Design 4

After finishing the designs I then contacted the owner explaining the following:

• Who I am
• What I do
• And The Reason For Contacting (Logo Revamp)
• Link the the work

And just for those that may be little confused, I did the designs before contacting the owner on a spur of the moment thing.

Discussions

Later that day I received an email from the owner, Geoserv, saying he’d love to use the new logo (which was a big relief) but that he was stuck between the 3rd and the 4th design and asked which of the 4 I prefered.

After a short exchange of emails Geoserv settled on Design 2..

I felt that the 3rd and 4th contained too much shadow in comparison with how white the theme used on Pligg.com is. I also felt that because of this less shadow is definitely more. Also I think the fact that the logo looks like it’s standing up next to the text makes it look much more vibrant and animated and does not confuse the viewer when it comes to perspective.

What did I get out of it?

Apart from that great feeling you get when you help someone, Geoserv offered to run an advert on his website for me and in addition to that he also wrote a small post in thanks!

Final Word

So just a quick note to all those looking into design, Be Spontaneous! Ok it doesn’t work all the time but in the majority of cases bloggers and website owners will take new designs or revamps with open arms, and who knows you may even get a link out of it.

In addition to that, don’t wait for them to come to you.. get out there and ask people if they want to use your service (if it’s free) or even just spring it upon them.. getting a portfolio is key and this is great way to build your portfolio and you skills!..

You’ve got nothing to lose, they can only say no..

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