Tonight I’m sitting at my desk wishing that I didn’t have work to do so I could be on the couch watching college basketball. I know many readers are from various parts of the world, so if you’re not familiar with American sports, March Madness is a huge event for college basketball fans. There is a tournament involving 64 teams that takes about 3 weeks to determine the national champion.
You may be wondering what this has to do with web design, and quite honestly the answer is nothing, and that’s part of my problem (and something I’ll attempt to change). Since I’m stuck at the computer most of the time and I won’t be watching many of the games, I figured it would be fun to have a similar type of tournament here to coincide with March Madness. Since the games started today and I just now got the idea I’m a little late, but that’s ok, we have enough time.
Introducing Blog Design Madness:
(First of all, the name sucks, so if you have a better suggestion leave a comment.) We are going to have a tournament featuring 64 of the best blog designs that can be found anywhere. The tournament will work just like the NCAA basketball tournament, head-to-head matchups, single elimination, winner advances to the next round. I’ll seed all of the competitors into a bracket and then I’ll post the matchups with a poll for readers and visitors to vote. The poll will be set for a certain length (probably 24 hours) and the winner moves on.
I think this will be a fun way to get everyone’s opinion of which designs they like the best, and of course the competitors can encourage friends and readers to vote if they like. I’ve decided just to include blog designs because having a tournament of any type of website design would be too broad to work very well (blogs can be broad too, but I think it will work better).
So here is where I need your help. Off the top of my head I have about 20 blogs in mind to include in the tournament, but I need a lot of reader feedback to let me know which 64 blogs should be included. Please leave a comment and mention a few blogs that you like. Feel free to keep mentioning those that have already been mentioned by other commenters because that could help me with the seeding. You can certainly nominate your own blog, but I do ask that you identify it as your own in the comment.
It doesn’t matter what platform the blog runs on, and it doesn’t matter what the subject is (although anything objectionable will not be included). It can be a blog that was designed by the owner or one that was done by a professional designer. Obviously, free themes should not be included. But if moderate customizations have been made to the theme it can be included.
Thanks in advance for your help with nominating blogs and voting when the time comes!
My suggestions will be the three blogs below:
Problogger
Freelance Switch
NDesign Studio
Expecting a heated tournament coming up here and I am glad to be part of it.
[…] Vandelay Website Design | Design, Marketing, Social Media & SEO Blog placed an interesting blog post on Blog Design MadnessHere’s a brief overview […]
A Blog Design Madness! haha that’s awsome! I like to vote Tricia’s Musings Blog!!
2 nominees ive got for you …
freelance switch
a list apart
http://www.designshack.co.uk
Here’s my own blog:
http://www.sachagreif.com
And other ones that I like:
http://www.elitistsnob.com/
http://pixelresort.com/
Are you looking for big names blogs or more “personal” blogs ?
One problem with big names, is that if I had to compare A list apart or freelance switch to other blogs I would probably be too influenced by how good their content is to judge them just on visual criteria.
PS: forgot to say it’s a great idea. Now you’ve got me hooked to your site just on the off chance that my blog might enter the contest…
PPS: You should do one for web design agencies sites after that !
[…] Blog Design Madness at Vandelay Design. […]
Sweet, this maybe where I find my new blog template.
I really like this one - http://www.blogdesignblog.com/
Logo and background are awesome + layout is also great!
Nice idea Steven. I like http://www.freelanceswitch.com/ the most.
I am going to nominate my Studio’s Design blog, which I did not design… but am very proud to be associated with because it is stunning:
http://www.viget.com/inspire
I also really like the look of: http://elliotjaystocks.com/blog/
Here are two resources for you, both are collections of well designed blogs.
http://ronicasdesign.com/blog/?p=133
http://www.blogdesignblog.com/gallery/
I love this blog, for both content and design -
http://www.webdesignerwall.com/
To be honest, I really didn’t think this was going anywhere when I began reading the post, but as I kept reading, this seemed like such an awesome, novel idea that I’ll try and give quite a few designs that I’ve bookmarked as “Personal Favourites” (in no particular order):
http://www.clazh.com/
http://www.tubetorial.com/
http://www.rsspieces.com/
http://www.wpthemes.ca/
http://www.freelanceswitch.com/
Can’t wait to see who wins!
Stumbled.
http://www.subdued.net
http://www.monofactor.com/
2 Very different style, both very impressive looks.
http://www.soulvisual.com/blog
minimalism and really nice
Veerles blog
Problogger for its layout.
David Airey for its aireyness
I’ll chuck Just Creative Design in too for good measure.
Gluck.
Well at least you can get all of the games via NCAA’s website
I was always partial to Brian’s themes and site
http://www.briangardner.com/
He also started http://ithemes.com/
I love my own (andrisetiawa.net). hehe..
My suggestions are problogdesign.com, northxeast.com, the-leaky-cauldron.org, and snook.ca/jonathan. And or course webmaster-source.com.
webdesignerwall.com is really good one. I also like vectips.com.
I like
freelanceswitch.com
and
bitsonewmedia.com
http://www.rascunhovirtual.com
I’m gonna suggest mine just for the hell of it - http://www.amycarriere.com/shops/shops.html. I’ve been working on the design lately & am continually tweaking it.
Argh - the link added the period in my comment above - please click here instead - http://www.amycarriere.com/shops/shops.html
I have to work too, but I am doing it from the couch!
My blog!
http://woork.blogspot.com :))
This is my blog… I know… shameless.
I just did a recent revision to it though, and I like it. Not sure how others will feel though.
http://vernonkesner.com
[…] Website Design is having a blog design competition in the spirit of March Madness. For those readers outside of the USA, this is a huge NCAA […]
I’d like to nominate my blogs:
I’m Blogging That and Raise It, Clean It, Blog It.
Both were designed by me.
Can’t wait to see how this plays out, great idea!!
Can I suggest mine? hehe…LoonDesign
Thanks everyone for your suggestions. Stay tuned over the next few days.
Well, of course i’ll nominate my own (who wouldn’t) - http://www.malenehald.dk/blog.
Then I’ll nominate http://pernilleandersen.com/, Veerle (http://veerle.duoh.com/index.php/blog/index/)
http://dfckr.com/
http://emmas.blogg.se/
http://spagats.blogspot.com/
http://sabinebrandt.typepad.com/sabinebrandt/
http://ilovetypography.com
10 Suggestions:
Idea Sandbox
Girl Solo in Arabia
JeffCroft.com: Blog
Ignite Living
Men With Pens
The Bing Blog
WonderBranding: Marketing to Women
Just Creative Design
ChangeOrder
Maximum Customer Experience Blog
Regards,
Kelly
A very nice idea. To kick this of, I’ll throw in some of the blogs that I follow:
http://dutchcelt.nl/weblog/
http://www.imwithsully.com/
http://www.ironicsans.com/
and http://www.qxm.de/ (in German)
And of course i’ll add my own site to the mix: http://www.squawkdesign.com
I think if you actually go to my site (not just a screen shot of 500px or so) I have a well thought out design.
My NCAA bracket is mangled now with Purdue out. Sigh, maybe next year. Way too many upsets this year, eh?
This is something I’ve recently put together. It uses WordPress so I’m pretending that it’s a blog, but really I guess it’s a kind of comic (sorry about that). If you have time to check it out you’ll see that I’ve done my best to make it appear nothing like a typical WordPress theme. Which might be the only real point of interest here. Thanks.
http://www.codextransportica.com
here we go:
http://donttrustthisguy.com/
http://psdtuts.com/
http://openswitch.org/
http://pearsonified.com/
http://snook.ca/jonathan
There’s a lot more on my list, but these are the ones I can think of right now
[…] Blog Design Madness competition is now officially underway! There are 64 blogs that have been chosen, and the […]
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Jacob,
David Airey for it’s aireyness? Haha. Like it.
Sounds like fun!
If it’s not too late I’d love to enter my site;
http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk
Chris
Chris,
Sorry, but it is too late. Thanks for your participation though.
[…] der sogenannten “Blog Design Madness” treten eine ganze Reihe von Blogs immer im direkten Duell gegeneinander an. Die Leser des […]