50 Stunning Examples of a great redesign: My Top Picks

A run down of a collection of my favourite redesigns in recent years

A redesign can be worth its weight in gold if you get it right. There is a thin line between freshening up your design, and taking a step backwards with a redesign.  Sometimes a redesign can be subtle and simple, and other times it can be a huge re-vamp of a company and it’s goals. Here’s a look at some of my favourite re-designs in no particular order.

01. AT&T Inc.

This is an ideal example of how a subtle upgrade can make a huge difference.

02. BP Garage

A completely different direction and modern feel. A huge improvement!

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Brazen; A versatile WordPress theme for the veteran-blogger as well as any beginner.

A sleek, ready to use WordPress theme created with you in mind.

Demo & Info

First off, I’d just like to introduce myself. My name is Spencer, and I am the lead developer here at Function. I’m the guy that takes Liam’s awesome designs, and turns them into working sites.

Liam had this design laying around, and I knew I couldn’t let it go to waste. So, I’ve spent the last week or so, coding and perfecting this theme. The theme is great right out of the box, ready to be used by anyone or very easily customized.  

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Themes: Evo a fresh Magazine theme available on Theme Forrest with $25 Giveaway

announcing our new theme with $25 Theme Forest credit to be won

Demo & Info

To celebrate the launch of Theme Forest and our new theme Evo, we’re giving away 5 sets of $25 credit to be used on any theme on the site. Find out more at the end of the post.

The theme is ideal for either being used straight out of the box, or brilliant for being customized. It wouldn’t be hard to stamp your own personality onto this clean and sleek magazine theme.  We’re very happy to have the theme available among so many brilliant themes on Theme Forest. Check it out and let us know what you think, for your chance to win $25 Credit.  

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Why I love the Design Community: My Guest Post

I run down 8 top points that make the design community a great place

Ahh yes, the Design Community. I love it! This is the topic of a recent guest post I wrote over at MyInkBlog. Below is an extract from the article, but you can read the full the article here. Please leave your feedback and comments on the actual post rather than here.  

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Contest: Win a Copy of the brand new Papercut Theme

Win a copy of the theme in a cool contest over at Fuel Your Creativity

Just a short post, more of an announcement to let you all know of a great interview & contest over at Fuel Your Creativity. The post discovers a little more about what goes on behind closed doors at WooThemes, and also gives away 3 copies of the New Theme, be sure to read the rules regarding how to enter, and the contest is only running until Wednesday the 27th August 2008.

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33 New Design Blogs with Great Content & Resources

A fresh batch of design related blogs & websites to get following

Everyone loves finding new sites with great content, so I’ve made it a little easier. Here is a collection of new websites and blogs with quality content. I’ve chosen these blogs based on the quality of their posts & resources and not the design. At the bottom there is all of the RSS feeds, so you can keep yourself updated with all of the sites featured.

1. Design Shard

From what I can see, this site only went live on July 25th, and it’s already had some popular content. I suggest you check out the 300+ Free Hi-Res Grunge Textures, as it’s my favourite at the moment.

2. My Ink Blog

A very well organized and well focused blog with some brilliant tutorials, links, resources and articles. So far there has been a lot of great posts, and I don’t see any signs of this changing. I was really impressed with the tutorial on Designing with Swirls & Flourishes, really top notch tutorial.  

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Themes: Papercut A Grungy News Theme for WooThemes

See Our latest Grunge Wordpress theme for Themes Giant WooThemes

We were recently contacted by Adii of WooThemes for an exciting new project. Adii and his team, including Magnus Jepson, Mark Forrester and Elliot Jay Stocks, who have recently launched their new site, wanted to bring some grunge to their themes, so got in touch with us and gave us a great project to get our teeth into.  

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32 Examples of Websites with a Brave colour Scheme

Inspire yourself, and maybe become a little braver with your colours

One key element in the design of any website is colour. Here are some great inspirational websites which show that colour can be used in very extraordinary ways.

1. Design Disease

Yeah we’ve all seen blue before, but this is beautiful.

2. Macalicious

The deep purple/blue work so well together.

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The Cutest Freebies: Twitter Bird Icons & Illustration

A SMALL BUT CUTE GIVE AWAY & UPDATE, FREE TWITTER ICONS & CHARACTER

More freebies, yes I know! This time we’ve put together a free Illustration, beautifully made by Pasquale D’Silva, and a couple of Icons which you can use for your twitter status sections of your site. The file is a transparent background PNG, so can easily be imported and scaled into any design.  

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125+ Unconventional Sources of Web Design Inspiration

A collection of my favourite inspirational sources & Styles

As a web designer I’m always looking for ways to get inspired when working on new projects. Usually this means searching the various web design galleries for some inspirational web designs. However, recently I’ve found inspiration from some quite unusual sources. Take a look at this variety of inspirational work, and you might find that it can help motivate and inspire you on your next project.

The basic point of this post is to show you that you don’t have to rely on the CSS Galleries to inspire you, there is a lot of creative work out there in various other mediums that will help get you in a creative mood.

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Creative Domain Names: Some Clever Alternative Methods

WE Look at some alternative ways of getting that domain you wanted

The web’s been around for quite some time if you really think about it, the first domain name Symbolics.com was registered on 15th March 1985, yes, some 23 Years ago! That means that any idea you have for a domain name today has been through someone else mind up to 23 years before you. Part of any brand these days is a good domain name, and if you have the money to spend on a one word domain then by all means go for it.  

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Function Brush Set: 33 Subtle Grunge Textures & Effects

A SET WE CREATED TO USE OURSELVES, BUT YOU CAN HAVE THEM TOO!

We’ve put together a great set of free Grunge & Textured brushes for you to use. The idea with these brushes is that they are to be used to create subtle grunge effects within your designs. We’ve made them from various dirty textures, surfaces and fabrics from images taken ourselves.  

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Free Theme: Outdoorsy Theme Now Available to Download

UNIQUE WORDPRESS THEME NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD FREE OF CHARGE

We’re finally ready to present our free wordpress theme to you. The theme is called “outdoorsy” and it’s perfect for the individual who wants something “slightly” different from your usual standard free theme. This theme is very unique, and quite graphics heavy, which we are aware of. But if you are after something unique you sometimes have to expect longer load times.

Update: We’ve reduced the file size dramatically! It’s now 1mb lighter

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Design Resources Pack #1: The Grunge Pack, Brushes, Fonts, Textures etc…

Amazing FREE downloadable resources for your grunge designs

Welcome to the very first edition of our Design Resources Pack, the basic idea behind this is; we collect a load of resources around a certain theme or style and put them together in one place.

Grunge is a style which is often misunderstood. Grunge doesn’t always have to mean really over the top dirty and dark. Today grunge comes in many forms, subtle grunge effects seem to be more common than just completely “grunging” something up. Whether you choose to be subtle, or over-the-top with your Grunge style here are some amazing resources to help you out.  

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