The Live Brum re-design

I should have written this post months ago when the current design went live. Unfortunately that co-incided with an unusually busy (even for me) period of my life and so it went without mention. It’s time to put that right.

Live Brum originally launched with a home-grown design (which you can still see here). It worked and seemed to be popular but it also lacked a certain something. This design wasn’t intended to be anything special – just my attempt at presenting the information in the cleanest way possible. Anyway, I wasn’t satisfied.

Enter Simon Clayson based at the legendary former RAF base at Rissington. Following a quick meeting Simon quickly came up with a raft of great ideas which we gradually distilled down to what you see before you today. There’s also a Flickr set showing old and new side by side. Simon did a terrific job and was an absolute pleasure to work with.

This new design went live a few months ago now and has had universally positive feedback. This design also made it much easier to launch new variations and that was an important priority for me. Future posts will show why.

What about the logo?

I wanted Live Brum to have a logo. Days before the original site launch in May 2008, Sam Rayner knocked me up a few ideas. In the end, mostly due to time pressures, I launched without anything of note. However, one of Sam’s ideas in particular really stuck with me and, in the end, we ended up using it on the re-design.

Those colourful criss-crossing lines may not appear to mean much but they have a distinctly Birmingham flavour. I’ve asked around and, to date, I’ve not met anyone that worked out their inspiration. Can you? I promise I’ll reveal all in the next few days.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Live Brum, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.