Spring Cleaning

Now after the wedding and the summer approaching — actually it’s the first time that we have more than 30°C this year here in Graz — it is time to polish my web site. So if you read this entry in your RSS reader you may wanna switch to the HTML version and have a look at it.

I bet you already had some kind of foreboding that a site update is imminent as soon as I published the wallpaper devkit with my new logo. Well you were right. I already worked on a new design for a couple of months. I guess I had about five different designs ready to go online — however none of them really convinced me. So I started over again…

But now I finally found a design I am really fond of. It’s a bit lighter than the previous version and it is called “BDlight” — some kind of play on words combining BD (Bartelme Design), light and delight. Oh man I like those wordplays :)

In progress

The design is still in progress — meaning that there are still some bugs to be fixed, some elements to be realigned. Actually if I haven’t put the site online now I would have waited another one or two months and most likely I would have come up with yet another design. Anyway the over all look and feel will now stay the same (at least for some time) and the site should work in all modern browsers. However if you experience any problems feel free to contact me. Well that’s basically everything. Have a nice weekend. Cheers, Wolfgang.

100 comments

It’s pretty nice, and it’s lighter ! But I used to prefer the former design, but it’s just my taste ! You’ve done such a great work on it ! Continue ;)

Frenetik

I want see to old design back. :) aha :)

fatihturan

Wow, it’s great, seems very light and fresh. Nice Work!

Chris Dorner

I think the previous design was more self-contained and somehow „better“. But it’s important how you like it yourself ;-)

nodh

Clean and Fresh!

William Wilkinson

Very nice design as always. But I liked the old one better.

fredrik

Very easy to read. Exactly what you want for a blog. By the wya, your wallpaper devkit was awesoem. Your logo is sharp and I’m honestly jealous. You’ve inspired me to scribble something out of my own.

Derek Punsalan

Wow, I’m impressed Wolfgang. Great work :)

Michael

It’s nice. I really liked the old one though. Well, you can’t please everyone.

Sean Hayford O'Leary

Nice new fresh look Wolfgang but I preferred the old one, sorry!

Gav

Hach, jedes Redesign bei dir ist perfekt. Persönlich gefiel mir das alte etwas besser, aber das neue ist sehr modern und passend! Schönes Teil, ich wünschte ich könnte sowas auch!

Johannes Becker

Your new design is really nice. Man — you got so much designs in the course of time — and all were cool!

Stefan

Nice! But your old one was okay.

Wouter

Sorry Wolfgang, aber das geht ja mal gar nicht. Dein altes Design war um Welten besser. Das hier ist langweilig…

dito

Ich find toll.. aber die Navigation unten zu haben, verwirrt mich immer wieder :-)

Marcus

Hm.. Auf jeden Fall mal was anderes. Ungewohnt von dir. Aber allemal sehr gelungen. Gratuliere.

Martin Labuschin

Schon schön und auch irgendwie frischer geworden, aber ich finds ein bisschen langweilig im Gegensatz zur alten Version. Und meinst du nicht, die Überschriften würden auch ein kleines bisschen kleiner wirken? Gruß Koka

Koka

Ein sehr gelungenes klares, frisches Design. Allerding gefiel auch mir die “alte” Version deutlich besser…

Mike

Very very nice. I like the attention to detail on the “checked” nav, sidebar and footer elements, very elegant. The semi-circle tab thingy is very nice as well. Keep up the good work.

Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain

Hm. BDlight. Delight? Yes. Light? Yes. BD? Yes. Beady (“small, round, and gleaming. (of a look) bright and penetrating”)? Yes, that too. Very nice, very friendly.

Jesper

Sehr gut gelungen, wirkt sehr aufgeräumt. Wie du das alte Design präsentiert hattest, gefiel mir es auch nicht so gut wie das Vorige, dann gefiel es mir aber viel besser, genau das gleiche wird hier auch passieren, man muss sich eben gewöhnen.

Martin Hofer

You’re probably the greatest designer I’ve ever seen. I really like your new taste but in my opinion a lil bit to simple for your style. But great work as used!

Tom S. Weber

Nice. Fresh. Simple. … but all in all, I liked the old one better. I think I just need some time ;-)

Julian Schrader

PS: What about coComment? It is really a handy tool: Link

Julian Schrader

To be completely honest with you, I loved you old site. The colors, the layout, the content. Now, your site has a very similar feel to many other blogs out there (even others within the 9Rules). I thought your old design really set you apart from everyone (in a good way). Congrats on your marriage, BTW.

ER

Ich dachte grad, huch haste dich vertippt? Wirklich ein schönes und klares Design. Mir gefällt es sehr gut :)

Benedikt

Lots of people seem to prefer the design of your previous site… However, I think it’s just a matter of time. A matter of getting used to it. When you introduced the design of your previous site, I was not very sure too (because I loved the one before). But within a few weeks, after getting used to it (and after seeing a picture of the old design by coincidence again), it became clear that you definitely made loads of progression; unnoticeably I had changed my mind. I think the same will happen here, as people just find it hard to see things change. Just realign some elements, add the magic, finishing touch, trust your own, unique qualities, wait, and see what happens (:

Marc

Don’t know why but I don’t like it.

Rene

Heh, the biggest problem with having an amazing site — it’s hard to top and please everyone. As you’re experiencing here. Very nice job on this one, I like it a lot. Super clean and tidy. Very easy on the eyes.

Matt Brett

I’m sure that everybody will agree with me that when designer makes upgrade of the site appearance it should be one step ahead from the previous one. You really succeed to achieve that goal. However, I liked the old design as well. I think the bright and vivid colors of the site are reflection to your recently experienced sweet emotions. Congratulations about the wedding :)

Videlin Nikolov

It’s good ! i love it. light and nice :)

Shani

It’s good ! i love it. light and nice :)

Shani

very nice, i like it :) too much white i think

coxis

I like the old one a tad more but this one is nice also. The only things that strike me odd about this site is the 9rules image. It looks a little off color and out of place. Also the bottom thingy with the Flickr images and Journal Entries comes off as a little to spacious, but that could just be me looking through it with Safari at its default width.

ZicklePop

Actually I don’t like this design, sorry :-( I think the old one was great. Really loved it.

pm

Wow, firstly i had some problems with recognizing your site. I thought that I typed wrong url but after 10 seconds I realized that’s your site. However I think that your new layout and colour scheme match better than this dark one.

adrmis

Mhm? Arial? Jetzt wäre mal wieder Zeit für einen Styleswitcher :)

Markus

Wolfgang, as always a beautiful job on the design of this site. I very much enjoy it. Cheers, Jeremy

jeremy

Hey Wolfgang, sehr schönes neues Design. Wobei ich die vorherige Version etwas crisper und spannender fand. Die hier sieht ein bisschen gewöhnlich aus. Aber nichts desto trotz ein sehr hübsches Design. Bin gespannt! Tim

Tim Adler

love the new design, very “summer”, just gonna take some time to get used to i suppose :P

Lewis

nice one, but i also liked the one before better and the one before that i liked even more! i think it´s time that you get a gallery where we can check out all your designs!!

claude

Very nice! I really like it. More Space, nice colors and it’s not a “classic” blog design. It’s really refreshing.

Milos

nice one!

keasone

Soy fan de tu sitio y me encanto el nuevo diseño, se ve limpio,agradable, muy padre felicidades

Beto

Very summer, truly beautiful.

tijs

Very clean and fresh with lots of cooling blue, relieving the summer heat. I like it a lot! Even more than the great forerunner. The only brickbat’s that I would prefer the page centered.

Björn Seibert

Very fresh an cool but impersonal. My favorite is your old site. The forerunner was more userfriendly and showed your face not the face of thousend other people. But: That is only my taste and all in one you make a big great job!

Michael

It is nice. But I myself prefer the old one…

marc

A really nice and fresh layout. Great contrast and readability. With the summer heat outside, it almost has a cooling effect :-).

Manuela

I really like this layout. The color choice is superb.

Eric Eggert

It’s fresh, light, and unique. I love it.

Dat Nguyen

Very nice! (Albeit a tad wide for my taste …)

Christian Bogen

Wonderful layout! Love it.

Jonny Strömberg

Gorgeous. :)

pickupjojo

You rock man :D

Magicsoul

The design is nice, but, to me it begs to be made a percentage width. IMO it would compliment the larger elements of your new design to expand the layout to fill the browser window.

Michael

I like the colors, type, layout, and especially the footer, but I also feel it might work better as a percentage or liquid layout. Perhaps just centering the content might also do the trick. All in all, I think it looks great. On another note, the “new” logo seems a bit too familiar. Not intentional I’m sure, but you might want to rethink your branding all the same. Link Link

Michael Wilson

Maybe somebody else wrote already: How about a CSS Switch? If there are a couple of finished designs it would be a shame to withhold it from your readers… :) By the way: The new design looks realy light and fresh, but I miss the stunning moment on the first glance…

Tim

This design as the ones before is just perfect. Well, maybe a little bit too perfect… I miss all the tiny details that made the earlier design somehow more personal, more approachable. But this might change, given the website some time to evolve. Anyway, it is good to see that you have not lost your productivity since you are married. :D Oh, by the way: Congratulations! Cheers Michael

Michael Schmidle

Thanks you guys for your feedback. As mentioned — the design is not finished yet. All those little nice things such as the “new badge” are still missing. So there is still a bunch of work to do :) …Maybe I should even try to center the site. Well let’s see :)

Wolfgang

Good job Wolfgang! Excel·lent feeling and fine colours! ;) Congratulations!

Oscar

Hi Wolfgang, As much as I hate to say this, I don’t see any improvements over your last version. It’s bigger, fatter, more 2.0-er, sure, but as a visual designer I think you forgot all about your audience. I’m whole-heartedly disappointed.

Egor

I like last version better. So I hope to see those little details and check out the design 100% done.

Ruslan

The website is nice, the logo however is a rip from quarks as I assume you’ve heard many times. I’d change it if I were you as it is a blemish on your clean design of a site. jmo

Brandon Richards

ich kann keine ähnlichkeiten zum Quark logo feststellen ;) höchstens zum <a href="http://www.scottisharts.org.uk/">Scottish Arts Council</a>

jens

Bin ja schon lange stiller Leser deiner Seite und bin begeistert von dem neuen Design. Schlicht gestaltet, mit kleinen verspielten Details wirkt die Seite sehr anspechend. Gratulation. Mit Besten Grüßen aus Graz, René

René Walter

Alles in allem sieht die Version recht gut aus, doch was die Details angeht, z.B. die Gestaltung der Sidebar und des Footers, würde ich auf jeden Fall die vorherige Version bevorzugen.

Philipp Daun

neiiiiiiiiiiiin!

kai

the new design is awesome! it’s a refreshing change from the one i use to know. —Miksago

miksago

Wow! It makes few days that I passed this way for the last time and now already has new layout? I think this is your third layout that I have the pleasure to appreciate. Very good Wolfgang! I like blue so much! :) I think you needs to still adjust some things, but in the generality it’s perfect! The interesting one is that you moved it of the green for the blue and still thus did not lose the identity, since your logo is all green. Congratulations!

Ramon Bispo

Ich finde das neue Design auch sehr gelungen. easy & clean! Irgendwie erfrischend! :) Dein altes Design fand ich persönlich aber wesentlich angenehmer. Bau doch einfach eine “switch.style”-Funktion ein! :)

Heiko Klingele

Das neue Design ist angenehm und ‘funktioniert’ gut. Ich fand das alte Design jedoch origineller. Hm… als Designer sucht man wohl immer Alleinstellungsmerkmale. :-p

Robert

A very fresh feel to your redesign, great for the summer!

weisheng

If there is one thing I love, it’s clean, simple design. I dig the slight changes to the color scheme as well, very crisp. Nicely done. The redesign looks great!

Matthew Anderson

Hi Wolfgang! Die jetzige Version ist die beste, die ich bisher gesehen habe — Respekt (die zentrierte Version)! Du schaffst es immer wieder, deine vorangegangenen Seiten zu übertrumpfen — normalerweise werden die Seiten ja ‘verschlimmbessert’. Ich habe auch gerade gesehen, dass du nur 10 Gehminuten von mir entfernt wohnst, wie klein die Welt doch ist …

Daniel

Bartelme Design takes off… Wow, this site is getting so cool! Exactly what I meant in a previous comment: just realign some elements, add the magic finishing touch, trust your own unique qualities, wait, and see what happens (: The latest changes (last night?!?) are a huge step forward Wolfgang, and I think this site is going to be a cracker! Nice to see you just went your own way: thumbs up!

Marc

Please go back to the whitespace version from a few days ago, it was much more refreshing :)

Tim

Beautiful work. I loved the old one, and I love this one too!

Mike Papageorge

Geniaaaaaal, diese version des neuen layouts is viel besser als die voherige version. Ich habe erst gar nicht gesehen das sich etwas verändert hat, aber…: zentriert, sprechblasen, etc (oder irre ich mich?) Super…

Dominik Lenk

I dig it, homeboy

Ted

As you may have already noticed, I continued working on the site’s layout. I reduced the font size and the over all width of the site, modified the way comments are being displayed and realigned some elements. However it’s still not finished :) So stay tuned… Btw I really appreciate your feedback — thank you guys.

Wolfgang

Great work!

Brutal

Ich muss auch mal ganz hart sagen … Das jetzige Design ist hunderttausenden Websites überlegen, aber wie dito schon sagte, war das alte um Längen besser, vor allem, weil mehr Grüntöne verwendet wurden.

Alexander Köhler

Ja, ich muss mich Alexander Köhler anschließen… Tolles Design, aber mir hat das vorletzte bis jetzt am Besten gefallen (Grün!), das war wahnsinn :)

alife

Love the new design! Very fresh and spring/summer like!

Senmu

Awesome new design Wolfgang and I have to say that even though I really enjoyed the last version of the site this one isn’t a step down/backwards by any means. It is still packed full of “Wolfgang style” :)

Edward Scherf

The design is very good. One thing doesn’t fit well, the top menu doesn’t have the mouse over effect.

Lucian Marin

I like it, of course though I do prefer your previous one.

Trevor

Viewing it the first time really impressed me. But after some minutes on the sites I do miss the bright green, that great contrast.

Philipe

Could you please publish some screenshots of your sites version before the last version? ;-) One day i printed a screenshot of that version of bartelme.at and some other screenshots for inspiring reasons and no joke: friends and others asked what nice site this is on my sheet — this should be an indicator how perfectly crafted this design was!

Chris

You may check out some screenshots on Flickr — the respective link is at the bottom of the page.

Wolfgang

Thanks, but there are only pictures of your last version, not of the version before the last which was that nice. I may try out archive.org… :-)

Chris

The new design is nice but I don’t see many (if any) improvements over the previous one. You really pulled off the dark blues and light greens nicely in your last version. Still, nice work.

Mason Galindo

God damn, that’s beautiful.

fredrik

Wie ist jetzt ist, ist es am Besten bisher. Nun passt alles zusammen und auch das Logo ist angemessen. Bei der letzten Version war doch unten das “Ding” zum auf- und zufahren. Das könnte man doch jetzt für das unten auch machen. Nur so ein Gedanke. Aber wie gesagt, jetzt finde ich es mitlerweile perfekt :)

Benedikt

Wow, einfach unglaublich! Dieses Design strahlt eine unglaubliche Fülle an Frische und Dynamik aus und stellt deine bisehrigen einfach in den Schatten (wobei jene schon sehr schön waren)! Einfach toll!

Olivier Eugster

Hallo Wolfgang! Lese Deinen Blog schon eine ganze Weile, habe mich aber noch nie gemeldet. Aber jetzt muss ich einfach: diese Version des neuen Designs ist ja einfach genial!

Christoph Studer

Du hast es mal wieder geschafft deine alte Version zu übertrumpfen! Jetzt gefällt auch mir deine neue Version viel besser! Gratulation! ;) Was kosten deine Dienste denn so? :)

Heiko Klingele

I like how your site is developing! Little additions each time I visit it seems! =) -----

James at Explode Code

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