What you see here is not just some simple face lift, but much more. It's in fact what some would call a total body makeover. Welcome to the new and improved lgpOnTheMove!
While the original design wasn't bad to start with, it was still somewhat simplistic considering the many newer design templates available on blogger. I really wanted to make my blog not just look better after seeing these, but perform better too. Compare as well to what some other hip and trendy folks were doing with their cool blogs, and I knew it was time for a serious makeover.
First of all, I needed my own unique logo, so away went the plain text and in comes the new banner. Yes, it's a big one! But it's more than just an over-sized home button. It's my blog's identity. The screaming-head photo was just ideal to use here in my opinion, as it resonates the notebook experience for so many users - it's what this blog is all about. And while I myself seldom dish out such verbal abuse on my notebooks, I'm confident the guy in the photo wasn't screaming because his proctologist was standing behind him. ;-)
Second, I wanted a nice background to replace the empty black, so I chose to use a photo of a moving train to give a sense of speed - don't forget, this blog is aimed at the mobile crowd. The size of the text and colors were changed to better fit the new background. Hopefully this will be easier on the eyes and a lot more pleasing to read.
You will also notice I went ahead and truncated all my existing blog posts. This is how it's meant to be done, with just the teaser on the main page, followed by a "read more" link to get you into the full, in-depth details of the article. This should improve navigation considerably from now on, and give the homepage layout a far more polished look.
Finally, I've added a new tab bar along the top just under the banner. This should also help maintain the polished look you see now, allow quicker searching for articles, make navigation super-easy and be the go-to spot for everything that's happening on my blog. A lot of the pages listed here will be updated constantly.
And while I don't want to give all the surprises away, you should be seeing some new product photos appear on the blog very soon. I've already gone back and updated a few articles with images.
The new setup looks amazing at 1680x1050, I really like it. It's also much easier to read at 1024 on a smaller screen than the old blog was. Making my blog mobile-friendly was another important factor, and I have to admit it looks sexy on my Touch Pro 2's 800x480 screen in landscape - everything loads quick and scrolls smoothly. I'll be continuing to make enhancements and tweaks as the weeks go, but for now, this is the redesigned lgpOnTheMove. Do yourself a favor and stick around!
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