MISSION: To search out and employ a wordpress design that suited Crystal Thompson’s burgeoning wordpress skills and met the immediate needs of her health focused blog. Crystal also requested aid in setting up her site and a small tutoring session on how to use wordpress, as well as the plugins that make wordpress easy.
NAME: Zero Crap Blog
AGE: Brand Spanking New
COLORS: Pink and Green
GENRE: Health and Lifestyle
Crystal Thompson first contacted me concerning creating a blog logo for her new zero carb focused blog and upcoming book. We took a peek at what she had currently set up and cringed a little inside before agreeing to help her. (Yes, even secret agents cringe.) Not that we thought her site or Crystal would be difficult to work with. In truth we thought it would be a piece of cake. It’s just that Crystal is one of those medical type personalities who finds veins beautiful, and the slab of steak she had up looked like an operation table to us. We later discovered that the template was blowing her image way out and cutting off the heart shaped piece of fat. When seen in whole it’s actually a kind of cool picture. But, unfortunately, not something that draws people to you or builds confidence in your professionalism.
After discussing Crystal’s plans for both the site and her future as a health coach, we recommended that she use her face in the banner, as people relate better to faces than things. We also recommended switching to a more contemporary wordpress template, one with more ability to customize and control size of the banner and colors. We set her up with a temporary logo while she figured out more of what she was interested in. Later, after defining site colors she purchased a font she liked and we cleaned up the letters for her and altered the zero so that it would be unique to her logo.
During our consultation with Crystal we soon discovered that she needed her own url, and she requested that we set that up for her with our existing go-daddy and host gator account. She was not ready to commit to a paid template and chose to use a free one. Within a day she was set up with her new site and prepped to start adding images. Crystal will be sending us a new image after she has a photo-shoot to capture her progress but we set up a temporary image to represent her present weight loss. Although it would have been very easy to create an even slimmer profile, we all felt that Crystal should be represented at her current fitness level and opted for the curvy figure she currently has.
The hand placements really bothered me so those were altered next. Close but not quite right, back to work… and while we’re at it let’s add the special effect. Now we’re talking…
Have I ever told you how much I love special effects?
Her site banner went from a little scary to amazing, and most importantly, now it features both her and her blog name. As an up and coming coach in the health and wellness field, that’s important. We’re looking forward to working with Crystal more on her site once she has decided what she needs and purchases a suitable wordpress template. I’d love to see the background changed to something food related but it seems to be inviting you to take the plunge into zero crap, and that works with her message of a cleaner, simpler, lifestyle. You can see her site in person here: www.ZeroCrapBlog.com
