Psssssssst. Come here.
I have a secret.
I had some work done.
I know what you’re gonna say, “You didn’t need it!” or “What’s wrong with the look you have now?” but first hear me out because despite protests and false assurances, this was long over due!
The past couple of months things just haven’t been what they used to be.
Things just seemed off.
And with my recent venture into a 31 Days to Build a Better Blog on SITS, I got all creatively inspired.
I decided I wanted a change. A new look. A facelift.
I wanted to change this:
BEFORE
And as a Type-A, you know change is NOT easy for me!
I began where I always do – browsing free themes. Except this time it didn’t take me long to accept reality.
What’s reality? That after 6 years of using Photoshop, I still barely qualify as a novice. Typical tasks that take professsionals a mere 30 minutes would take me 3 weeks – and they’d look remedial at best! So I bit the bullet and hunted cyberspace for a solution.
I hired a creative designer and placed my fetus-positioned self in her hands. She was gentle.
Based on my experience, here are the top 3 things you need to know BEFORE going under the design knife:
- Know your budget. Right off the bat set a goal for how much you’re willing to spend and stick to it. This will help as you search for designers as many can be ruled out by their listed pricing. In my search I saw ranges from $100 up to $5000. Stick to your budget – many designers are willing to work with your budget, but you have to let them know right off what your price range is.
- Know what you’re getting up front. Nancy at Dabbled Studios took time to email me back and forth. What started out at a few changes quickly added up. I gave her my budget and my to-do list of changes. She worked a plan on how to get me the changes I wanted but in the price range I needed. Having a designer that’s willing to customize a plan for YOU is what you want. A lot of time pre-packaged deals may not include what you need – or might not apply to you. Find someone who will hear you out, formulate a custom plan and let you know up front (before you pay) what you’ll get.
- Know what design style you like. For me, this was the hardest part. I like tons of things! I’m an optimist! It took me a long time to figure out what sort of look I wanted and it also took a little nudging for me to be open minded about what would be designed for me. I spent hours looking at blogs and finally came up with a list of 5 or so that I liked the look of. I was able to give those to Nancy as inspiration and through that (as well as her investigating my own blog and several photos I had) she was able to get a good feel for the style I was looking for. It’s important to know what you like, otherwise designing a new look will be next to impossible – both for you AND the designer.
AFTER
If any of you are interested in a mini-makeover (which is what I’m calling my new look) then I’d be glad to recommend Nancy to you. I’m not getting paid to recommend her, nor am I receiving a discount for telling you all about her. I simply think it’s important to talk about the good experiences too. Far too often there are tons of reviews of stuff people hate and not enough props to the stuff we love.
So…enough of the technical stuff. Tell me what you think of my new look!!!
