The August 2003 redesign of DetroitHockey.Net was mostly unnecessary but I did it anyway. I had never really liked the “edgier” design I tried to do in the November 2002 redesign and wanted to go back to a more traditional style for the site. As well, I thought that too many images were used in the November 2002 design and wanted to develop a layout that was less graphically-intensive.
I modeled the new design after a newsletter layout. So that I could keep the existing templates as part of the site’s “skin” package, I left the three-column layout of the body completely intact and focused on the header and footer. I increased the size of the header to give more room for the site’s logo and the wordmark, hoping that the increased branding effort would keep visitors returning to the site.
The banner advertisements were moved above the wordmark, keeping them out of the way and keeping the site’s title closer to the body of the page.
Just because I could, I developed one red, one grey, and one white version of the design, so that the new design as well as the old design would have three available versions.
Oddly enough, the old version of the site, which I disliked because it wasn’t “traditional” enough, became known as the “traditional” template while the new design became the “newsletter” template.
The above text was copied directly from my original portfolio as I imported it over to the blog. It was not updated for re-publishing.