Time for a Tummy Tuck and a Little Botox

By Rich Manalang • September 25th, 2009 • View Comments

sketched-iconsJake and I have grown tired over our bland red, black, and white theme.  I finally had a bit of time to carry out a simple redesign.  Here it is.  We wanted something super simple that was easy on eyes and had a nice font.  To spruce it up a bit, I added some drop shadows and rounded corners (of course).  And since I like to draw sometimes, I decided to draw a few icons on my iPhone using the newly released SketchBook Mobile app (highly recommended).

Like it?  Think it sucks a**? Tell us (the truth) below.


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  • It's minimalist and clean. The sweet icons make it a bit hip. I likes. :)
  • Great, that's what Rich and I were hoping to accomplish, so win.
  • Just got my new Wacom Bamboo pen tablet. Maybe I'll take another whack at the icons.
  • Woah, cool. That deserves a write-up review post. Looks cool. It's a peripheral right?
  • yep. usb toy.
  • Jim
    One thing I noticed is that on the 'Recent' and 'Popular' box, the CSS on the hyperlinks makes all of the text look the same, so that you can't see what's a link, and what isn't. Not a big point, but I find myself moving the mouse over the text, to work out where the link ends and the text begins.

    I agree with Joonas, that the top bar looks a bit squashed up - it's easy to miss the name of the site, especially as you've upped the standard font size.

    It's a great new look though - apologies if I appear negative.
  • I can take a look at the Disqus comments widget to see if I can style the links more obviously, assuming they allow something obvious.

    We'll look into making the top bar bigger, not sure if Rich will want to spend any more effort though, so you might be stuck with it ;)
  • Jake, you're right, I don't want to spend more time on it any more. I'm pretty much done. Frankly, I like that the appslab logo is small... content is king -- not our "brand." Re: the links on the sidebar, I experimented with different treatments. Maybe I'll change the color slightly.
  • First impressions: like the sketchy icons, would like to see that theme extended to other areas of the layout (seems a bit disconnected now) -- time for a new logo? *g* Also, the logo bar at the top feels a bit squished and apologetic, especially compared to the generous spacing elsewhere.

    But all in all, looks good!
  • We wanted to keep the theme simple and focused on the content and above all, easy for Rich :) He may tinker with a new logo or style some other areas, but that all depends on his free-time and desire. I'll take what I can get.
  • The hand-drawn icons do give the blog the "lab" feel!
  • I like them too, although I wish the email one had a border around it. Looks a bit out of place.
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