So, what’s new?

1. The Blog has been separated from the main part of the site. This is because I initially want my site to be working to get me job offers and project enquiries, and I felt that the previous homepage wasn’t focusing on that target anywhere near enough.
2. Updated homepage with Rob Barrett mascot. I want to get involved with more illustration work in the future, as opposed to the web design which is currently taking up a lot of my time, and it just made sense to have something illustrated to greet visitors to my site.
3. My portfolio layout has been updated. Rather than have a long list of images and descriptions and testimonials, it’s now a collection of images depicting various works within a project, and if the reader wants more information then they can progress to an individual post to read more. I think this allows a reader to much more quickly assess the type of work that I do. I’ve also added in a small gallery of my personal works on Flickr.
4. The two sidebars have been pared down to one compact sidebar. A lot of the previous sidebar content was superfluous — I didn’t need a long list of post categories, or links to social bookmarking sites (those have now been moved to the information panels inside individual posts), and there certainly wasn’t any need for it to be spread across multiple columns as it was before.
5. I’m now making far more use of the footer. It now contains a list of my five most recent posts, along with links to my RSS feed and my other appearances throughout the internet, as well as a secondary list of navigation links.
6. Lastly, I’ve added my Twitterlove Bird to the edge of the page. Well, it seemed a shame to let him go to waste!

I’ve already had a couple of comments from my friends on Twitter about how they think I could make further improvements, which I will get around to in time, but for now I’m happy with the changes. They’re not huge, revolutionary changes, but I think they’re significant enough that it should make a positive difference to the way my site get used. What do you think?

You can see my previous page layouts here: Archived website screenshots on Flickr

© Rob Barrett Design.

I'm planning to widen the site design (less than 1% of my visitors are still using 800×600 resolution) to allow for a couple more top-level link in my main navigation and to let the design breathe a little more.

The portfolio will be simplified somewhat, I'll add an about me page, each major page will contain a contact form to make getting hold of me that much easier. Change is coming… watch this space.

© Rob Barrett Design.