Smashing Magazine Re-DesignProcess Photographs

Smashing Network Badge Concept

Logo, or badge ideas in early stages. Work eventually rejected and passed on to another designer..

Smashing Network Badge Close-up

Once again, this was as far as our involvement went with the bade design, but we quite liked playing with these ideas.

Badge Deployment Concept

This is how we imagined the feature area for the Smashing Network to look, eye catching, simple with some handy stats below.

First Shot at the Elements

Some early ideas included this search bar that sort of "cut in" to the design, also on show is a simple Subscribe area.

Presentation to the Client

As well as showing the site in full we mocked up a quick in browser and on screen preview for the client.

Search Bar Ideas & Drop Downs

Inspired by various Mac Apps and the iPhone OS these drop downs were pitched in some of our early concepts.

Unique Social Media Counters

We went for a simple counter to catch the attention of users, using the recognizable colours of the various social sites to make each counter stand out for each button/counter. The idea never made it live.

About Page Slider

Various achievements would have been placed in this graphic slider, in a nice bold and simple format. Idea not taken further.

About Us Layout

We had our good friend Pasquale D'Silva work on the characters and we worked out a unique layout for each staff member.

User Profile & Feeds

We wanted to make the user profile page more interactive & interesting, the idea of using their various streams seemed a good fit. The streams were visible if you clicked in the tabbed area.

Vertical Tabs

We had the idea for Apple style vertical tabs to be integrated in various pages throughout the site.

Smashing Network Graphic

A closer look atsome of the detail inthe Smashing Network featured area that we mocked up.

Logo Touch Up

We did some small touch-up work on the logo too. Many of you might not have noticed, but they wanted a little bit more contrast. We tried to keep it subtle, but just different enough for you to see, click the image for a side-by-side comparison.