Back in summer of 2002 I got contacted by the guys at Slo-Tech, asking me to redesign their aging website. Back then I was designing websites with about 2 views per day, while Slo-Tech was already approaching around 15000 unique visitors each day, so this was quite big to me. A few others also contributed, so I had to make it big. Young and inexperienced as I was, and considering the design trends of the days, I came up with this:

August 2002 - The first design was purple and all, but a few themes were made.

The redesign hasn’t been taken seriously then. It was not until September 2004, when a new request was made. This time, Slo-Tech had gotten a logotype and wanted a design to go with it. So I went for a white design this time.

October 2004 - The main idea was not to change the existing design too much, but to give it a fresh look.

The design, though very slowly, evolved trough time…

January 2005 - I talked to the designer of the Slo-Tech logo, who quite liked the designe, but taught me to align my texts.

April 2005 - More structure has been given to the design, making it look more compact.

November 2005 - Different menus and darker colors

January 2006 - Approaching the final look. The design has been simplified a lot.

And finally into the “final” version, which has been introduced as an april fools joke just yesterday, but kept due to positive feedback.

Even though it took almost 6 years, I believe the design has come out too soon. There is still much that needs to be done to it.

Finished or not, the design has arisen some mixed opinions - some love it and the others hate it. What can you expect after replacing a 9 year old design?

One of the biggest complaints about the redesign was the introduction of bright colors. The old design was dark (gray text on black) and people are complaining that the new white background is hurting their eyes. So I guess half of the internet, including Google, must have gone wrong with their designs. Anyway, theming is possible and the design shouldn’t have come out without the first set of themes anyway.

Two other biggy was the use of a small font size. Looking at the design right now, I must say I agree with this complaint. However, along with different color themes, selectable font size was also meant to be in the final version. So I guess it has to be finished, as well as the default font size brought up by at least a pixel.

Looking back at it, I’ve learnt quite a lot with this design. It was my first “serious” design, where I had to put usability beyond appearance. I’ve learnt a lot about web usability, accessibility, semantic code, accessible javascript and buzzwords like that. It was also my first table-less design (hooray for that!). I’m not completely happy with the final result, but it has brought me some valuable web design experience. I just wish I could properly finish it, before going live.