Lobster Two - {Free Font Friday}

Loving Life Designs is getting a Ginormous overhaul. Not only are we changing the look of the blog. But we are also overhauling the posts. The one major thing that was lacking in 2012 was regular posts. The two of us have made a resolution to post more and we think that if we have themes to post about we'll post more often.

Starting with.....

The plan is that on Friday, Michelle and I will present to you a new free font that we just can't get enough of.

Today's font is that font that you see every where. AND I mean everywhere. I've seen it on TV, in magazines, on billboards. You name it I've seen it there. I've never known a font to blow up in popularity like this one has. That's right you, guessed it, Lobster Two.

Isn't it a beauty? We just love using it in our own designs.  Here are a few of our designs where we use lobster two.

Here is a funny article that goes into detail about the misuse/overuse of this font. http://www.mishes.com/articles/lobster-font-abuse

I love the collage of images with all the sites, articles, magazines that have used the font. 

{images via http://www.mishes.com}

To download the font click here.

To check out other fonts from this designer, check out their website here.

 Enjoy the font, try not to go over board, like us and the rest of the designing world. :)

UPDATE - Jan 31, 2013
 I was watching HGTV last night and during one of their commercials I noticed Lobster Two font being use. See, it's every where!

Custom Blog Re-Design - {Color of My Fangs}

Back in August, (yes, forever ago) Katie of "Color of My Fangs" (colorofmyfangs.blogspot.com) contacted Michelle and I asking for some help with the look of her blog. She was having trouble achieving the look she wanted and asked if we could figure it out.

I made my attempts at it but was having a hard time making the current template do what she wanted it to do. Instead of "fixing" the template, I thought it would be easier to start from scratch and just create a brand new template for her.

She didn't want much. Just a simple minimalist blog that highlighted her pictures more than anything else, with a horizontal drop down menu, that had a search function, and a social media icons menu. Like I said not much.

It was a challenge to have the two VERY different menus in the same widget. One was text and CSS based and the other was image based. At first I wasn't sure what I was going to do but then I found the solution. I had to modify the template and create a new two column section above the post area, separate from the single column section meant for the default blogger menu. Then make two separate widgets for the different menus. One on the left column and the other on the right. It took some trial and error but I was able to finally accomplish the look she wanted.

The other thing Katie wanted was to have her outfit images to be as large as possible. Unfortunately bloggers default sizes were not working for her. The original size was WAY to large and extra large was just a little too small. I ended up making some minor CSS adjustments to the images which made it possible for Katie to make them the perfect size for her needs.

Here is what the final look turned out to be. 

Katie was really great to work with and she was very understanding of my limited time. I think from start to finish it took about 2 months - I was able to get the finished blog to her in October. A little long, but not too bad considering all the other things I was doing those months (working part-time, my 5 year old started kindergarden, 2 of my sisters getting married, my anniversary, editing a movie - thats right I edited a movie, that will be in a few film festivals - it's called Jeb Finds God and you can watch it on Vimeo and not to mention that I had an infant attached to my hip) and the fact that it was all pro-bono. Not planning on doing that again. If you are interested in a blog design email us and we'll send you some info on our design process. 

Thanks for reading - What do you think of the design?

Loving Life Designs is All New

Notice anything different? Of course you do this blog has done more than just a 180 turn. It's insane how different this thing is. It took us about 6 weeks to really figure out what we wanted the blog to look like, to code it and then to perfect it. We're still not 100% complete with the look, there might be a few more changes but nothing TOOO dramatic.

It's a far cry from what the blog originally looked like - and this version below is like update #6. I don't think we have a screen shot of what the blog originally looked like.

We've gone through a lot of changes here at loving life. Our logo has had a few major updates.

Original Logo/header - which had like 3 updates.

Current/recently retired Logo/header - which we made 2-3 updates to.

I really enjoyed this header. I think my favorite part was the yellow flower. Michelle did a grand job on that design.

Do you see a trend? Thats a lot of change for a blog that is just two years old.

Here are some things that we're hoping to accomplish with this update.

• Update/modernize the look and feel of the blog - our goal was to make it feel more like a website than an actual blog. 
• Update the color scheme - make it feel more open and welcoming, not so dark with all the greys and blues. 
• Create a new logo to match the new color scheme and overall new ambiance of the blog. 
• Make it easier for new potential followers to locate our different designs. 
• And FINALLY be settled on a look for the blog - NO MORE UPDATES!

So lets introduce you to the blog.

1. First thing you'll notice that we changed the logo/header.

I'll let michelle explain her new design and why she went with this look.

When designing the logo header I wanted to encompassed our motto "Creating Fresh Modern Designs" It's fresh, chic and invites viewers to explore our blog further then the first few posts.

2. Next is the layout. Like I mentioned earlier we wanted something that felt more like a website and not a blog. First thing you'll notice is a welcome post. It's for new visitors to the site, it's meant to introduce them to who we are and also give them an easy search function. Take a look at our Custom Search Tutorial for more information about that. (And yes, that is a picture of the two of us as kids...we were pretty stylish)

3. Next we have a wonderful jQuery slideshow. It's pretty great. In fact I absolutely love it. It scrolls through five images and introduces you to our services and available downloads here at Loving Life Designs.

4. Below that we have a "Whats new from Loving Life Designs" widget.

It updates automatically as we post more tutorials and downloads to the blog. The three most recent blog posts will always be there.

5. So where is the blog? What happened to the ability to scroll through all our posts? Oh! There it is!

That's it for the tour. Go ahead, take your time and discover the new site. If there is something that is not working for you let us know so we can fix it.

Thanks for reading - Let us know what you think of the design.