I am always excited to be part of Envato team ( marketplace reviewer ), this time, it is even more awesome because I had the pleasure once again to work with Collis Ta’eed and the team at Envato. It is a true honor for me.

It is not an easy job to redesign such a huge network of sites, a lot of pressure on the team behind it. You will need to know what the community needs, what to be included and what not. The first time I saw the nearly finished mock of the redesign, I know that the community is going to love it. It provide lots of great features and possibilities for future implementation.

I am going to break down a few points on how I see the re-design and show you some of my drafts (logo and concept design).

The Logo

I am not sure who else is involved on logo redesign part, as far as I know. Collis is the person in charged. He contact me and show me the sample of what he want. The first impression when I saw the sample is, I like the font! Seriously, it makes a lot of sense to use that font to match the logo style and sizes. For logo, I am not really 100% re-design it but partly. If you still remember the old logo. It is an animal hiding behind the marketplace name. We keep the same concept, but this time, it is more stylish and minimal. We only show part of the animal of every logos.

New Envato Marketplaces

Here’s some screenshots of the brand new marketplaces.

What Work Did I Do?

I’m going to show you some of my early mock-ups that I sent to Collis months ago. Before you look at the mock-ups then, it’s probably interesting to know how Collis went about the project. He approached 3 designers (Liam Mckay, Aaron Lynch and I ) informing us of his master plan to give the Marketplace a refresh. He wanted a new perspective on the design and some ideas from outside of his own head.

Our brief was to create something conceptually new and fresh, and we had lot of creative freedom on that. I understand that Collis was going to take our designs and create something himself in the end. So, what he was looking for is actually idea and usability. I think it was clever approach on Collis’ part, it offered him a variety of styles from a variety of designers that he could take and shape into a fantastic design. So, aesthetic quality isn’t the major issue when doing the re-design. Below are the mocks.

My initial idea is to turn the item page into the author selling page. The priority will go for the author’s items. Then followed by related items or recommend items. Looking through the final live version I can see tiny things that could have been made as a result of my designs, but I am not sure.

Final Thought

It was a great experience to be able to directly work with Collis and such a good company. I hope to have more chances like this to learn from them. Besides, I am just too excited that I can be listed alongside with Liam Mckay and Aaron Lynch. I love their works every much!

Now that the site is all new and shiny it’s the perfect time to sign up, if you haven’t already. One account will be able to access all marketplaces and get some awesome audio, flash, templates, graphic and other digital files in low price!

Updates

1 thing I love about the new re-design is the author follow and the announcement feature exclusively for authors.

We all realize how powerful is a community can be when we are talking about a community globally. ConceptFeedback is a new medium designed specifically for marketers, graphic designers and web developers to provide a simple tool for getting free, sincere feedback from like-minded professionals.

It is very straight forward, is either people like it or not. User can vote, suggest and comment. It is something “in your face”. The result, any design problems are caught earlier, ensuring that only high-quality ideas make it into launch. It saves your time in keep repeating the same process when you are going to launch a product.

I realize that there might be copyrighting issue when you publish your concepts and ideas. This is the feedback from the company founder and CEO, Andrew Follett.

There is not a whole lot we can do about copyrights that I know of. Design may be stolen, but so far we have had zero complaints and ConceptFeedback is not much different than a gallery site in that respect. Anytime a designer puts his/her work on display, there is the threat of copycats, but I think it is more of a perception than reality.

- Andrew Follett

But, there is also another way to prevent that. ConceptFeedback allows users to post concepts privately. This means they will not show up on the “public” forum and the concept is only viewable by the e-mail addresses selected (this could mean clients, co-workers, friends). You also have the option to do both, put your concept on public display and invite outside reviewers.

In my opinion, the world has changed. The way we communicate with the users is different. It is more direct and transparent. This also can be the key of success for any modern businesses. Company started to care about their user’s feeling while user’s started to demand something with quality.

A little about myself, I recently involved myself more into user experience design. It is a totally different area compare to plain web design. It makes me feel I am more close to a user rather than a designer. Majority of the users more care about the usability compare to the design. It’s extremely important to get honest feedback from the actual users and to know what they really want. So, I think ConceptFeedback can be a great place for us to improve and get closer to the community.

• Web Design
• CSS / XHTML
• WordPress
• Logo Design

This is my first attempt to create my own CSS Grid System – MyCSS Grid System. I notice that there are a few useful CSS Grid System out there but it is a shame while I never use them. I know it is useful and especially when you work for a company. They prefer to have all this thing well documented. It us good for company future development.

Why I Create This While I Can Download Others?

I am so stubborn, I don’t want to follow others! ( just kidding ). I notice that most of the CSS Grid System have lots of extra classes of elements. It is good and handy but is it really useful for your project? So, I try to create a very simple CSS Grid System just for blog or small website. So, this can be a little different from what you see in other popular framework. You can find all popular css grid system from the Grid System Generator.

Introduction

MyCSS Grid System is using the maximum of 960px width. It comes with the most common layout proportion for blogs and creative web sites. It is also using the best divine proportion in web design. This may not that useful compare to those well built css grid system but I think it somehow do the job.

How It Works?

In the download files, there are:

• index.html
• grid.css
• format.css

You can start coding your project by including the grid.css.

Codes Preview

The grid.css, I am using my name as the first and the last div (Easy to remember, every time you use this system, you will remember my name! Hehe.. So, the first div from the left has a class name “kai”, the last div on the right will has a class name “loon”. So, “kailoon to complete the work!”.

* { /* CSS reset, you can replace with your own css reset codes*/
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
}

.b1 { width: 640px; }
.b2 { width: 300px; }
.b1 .b1 { width: 310px; }
.g1 { width: 580px; }
.g2 { width: 360px; }
.g1 .g1 { width: 280px; }
.g2 .g2 { width: 170px; }

.col {
	float: left;
	margin: 0 10px;
	display: inline;
}

.box {
	margin: 0 auto 20px;
	width: 960px;
}

.kai { /* The first left component*/
	margin-left: 0;
}

.loon { /* The last right component*/
	margin-right: 0;
}

.clearfix:after {
	clear: both;
	content: ' ';
	display: block;
	font-size: 0;
	line-height: 0;
	visibility: hidden;
	width: 0;
	height: 0;
}

.clearfix {
	display: inline-block;
}

* html .clearfix {
	height: 1%;
}

.clearfix {
	display: block;
}

The HTML:

<div class="box clearfix">
		<h1>960px - Normal Blog Layout</h1>
		<p>960px</p>
</div>

<div class="box clearfix">
	<div class="col b1 kai">
		<p>640px</p>
	</div>
	<div class="col b2 loon">
		<p>300px</p>
	</div>
</div>

<div class="box clearfix">
	<div class="col b1 kai">
		<div class="col b1 kai">
			<p>310px</p>
		</div>
		<div class="col b1 loon">
			<p>310px</p>
		</div>
	</div>
	<div class="col b2 loon">
		<p>300px</p>
	</div>
</div>

<div class="box clearfix">
	<h1>960px - Golden Divine Proportion Layout</h1>
	<p>960px - The Golden Divine</p>
</div>

<div class="box clearfix">
	<div class="col g1 kai">
			<p>580px</p>
	</div>
	<div class="col g2 loon">
			<p>360px</p>
	</div>
</div>	

<div class="box">
	<div class="col g1 kai">
			<div class="col g1 kai">
				<p>280px</p>
			</div>
			<div class="col g1 loon">
				<p>280px</p>
			</div>
	</div>
	<div class="col g2 loon">
			<div class="col g2 kai">
				<p>170px</p>
			</div>
			<div class="col g2 loon">
				<p>170px</p>
			</div>
	</div>
</div>

Conclusion and Download

It is simple and easy to use as it is very specific. The CSS file size is extremely small, only 778 bytes!. You can preview the demo here. If you have any questions or you find any bugs or you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment. If you find this useful, let me see how / where you implement it. Thanks!

Hasrimy, a freelance web designer based in from Malaysia with a very promising portfolio.

Please tell us more about yourself

I love web standards. I love design with CSS! I am trying to bring web standards to Malaysia, create awareness to the public – let them know what the criteria of a good website are. It does not only depends on design, but it must have validation.

Hi all! Thank you so much to Kailoon for giving me this great opportunity to be featured in his website! My name is Hasrimy, the founder of hasrimy.com. My forte is more on the web design concept and creating ideas on how website can really benefits the user as well as to improve the business and also reach the targeted customer easily.

Currently, I am dedicating my entire time concentrating on web design and web application together with my partner (he is in charge more on the programming and coding side). The idea is to expand our services widely and provides a convenient environment to our customers by offering a one stop solution centre.

I have wide experiences in this field. I started from a small design house to a reputable GLC company. I also learned a lot when I lectured in a few colleges and private universities.

How long have you been in this field and why?

I have been involving in this field for more than 6 years. Why? Because I have a deep passion on it. It is part of me. It is all started as a hobby. I am very keen into arts since school and I have spent most of my time to draw each day without fail. I also look at it as a therapy for me – as escapism from all the stresses and pressures.

How did you market yourself in the beginning of your design career? How about now?

I started from small. At the very beginning – I have to chase people to be my client. Offer them my services (very cheap price!) and have to convince them that I can do a better job. Gradually, I started to create my portfolio. And now, I have a strong portfolio to sell myself!

After that – from word of mouth and client’s recommendations – then I’m getting more jobs in hand. From there I created “Hasrimy.com” – purposely to showcase my work to my clients and indirectly also as a reference website for my students to learn CSS! From there I got listed in CSS Mania (a second Malaysian who was listed there ; and people started to recognize my existence.

Every day I will improve my design – every morning before I started my work, I will make sure I updated my ideas with the latest design technique by surfing webcreme, css mania, computer love, netdiver and other related sites.

Now I received a lot of request everyday through my website – local and also international; from people who would like to hire me for their web design, web applications, logo, and printed materials and so on. My website is the best ‘marketing personnel’ that work for me 24/7, 365 days, without fail!

What is the common challenge when dealing with a project (web)? How you came over the challenge?

The most challenging part is to convince the client with your concept. Of course idea is the most challenging part in any design. System is fixed, design is abstract. No matter how good is the design, if the client does not like it – it’s a total failure! So for me – understanding the client needs is the fundamental in developing ideas and concepts based on their requirements.

What your own define the “quality” or “complexity”?

Quality = satisfaction of work produced + client’s satisfactions
Complexity = strategy + dedication

How you see the freelance market in Malaysia?

I foresee that in the near future, there will be lots of Malaysian working from home aided with only small laptop and supported by Internet connection. That’s the reality and the trend is extending. Designers prefer to work on their own. They can earn more money and at the same time, gain more self- satisfaction.

For me, freelance market in Malaysia is getting bigger (from an online business view) and the world is getting smaller. Everything is within our fingertips. My business segmentation not only caters for local people but also I received a lot of request from UK, London, Taiwan, Singapore and Ireland. They are keen to approach our local market not mainly because our human resource is cheap, but the main factor that triggers their interest is our quality of work. It’s very hard to get a good web designer who really can design according to web standards…

Can you please briefly explain your workflow on a project?

My work flow is simple. First I will ask the client their requirements for the website. After that, I will proceed with some study and research. As a result of that, I will get back to my clients with my new propose ideas for them. If they are satisfied, then I will start with developing the whole website.

Any advice for someone who just starting out?

My advice is simple – no matter what you are doing, the most important thing is you must identified and develop your passion and interest first before proceed with what you are doing.

Check out Hasrimylatest works

• signatureprospect
• springlabdistribution

• Web Design
• CSS / XHTML
• WordPress

Congrats to all freelancers or participants! Here are our winners for the license of Fanurio Time Tracking software!

Winners

• John

  I run a freelancing business, and it’s quite difficult t keep track of everything, and keep organized. Let alone, guarantee my customers an honest price. If I could better track time, and be more productive, I would be more able to help serve my clients to the best of my ability. After all, in this economic downturn everyone needs to save money wherever possible.

• Matthew Craig

  As a freelance designer I would use the software to manage my time effectively, bill clients correctly and accordingly, and get feedback as to how I am doing during certain projects and what I can improve on.

• Sam

  For calculating time and amount to bill my clients.

  I have had a lots of difficulties cause of not calculating time for particular work. As the software itself says user friendly interface
  , flexible timer and able to produce invoices thats what I want on a time tracking and billing s/w application.

The winners will receive their prizes soon via email from the sponsor. Thank you everyone who participated.

My WordPress is a professional WordPress theme with the intent and focus on creating a community site. It is widget ready, print ready, page-navi ready, ad optimization ready, SEO friendly, smooth tabbing and dropdown using jquery, breadcumb integrated and many more!

This theme comes has 6 awesome colors ready for you to choose. You can also switch the sidebar position from right to left with only one single click. You also able to switch sidebar position from right to left or the other way round.

It also provide a highly demand user link feed to allow your reader to submit news, example http://psd.tutsplus.com/ and http://kailoon.com. My WordPress provide up to 9 ad slot for your needs. Include a leaderboard, 2 rectangle ad and 6 small (125px) ads.

Features:

• 6 Colors
• Feedburner Integration
• Powerful Theme Option Page
• User Link Feed Ready
• Able to switch sidebar position by a single click
• Auto image resizing
• Flickr Showcase
• Wp-navi and breadcrumb integrated
• Ad Management System
• Social Linking (Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.)
• Modern footer display
• Smooth tabbing system
• SuperFish for dropdown menu ( Both pages and Categories )
• Unique author and search result page
• Unique threaded comment styling
• Trackbacks and comment separated
• 2 Column Tabless (CSS Layout)
• Sidebar Widget Ready
• Gravatar ready
• Valid CSS and XHTML
• Browser compatibility: All Major Browsers
• Related Posts
• Popular Posts
• SEO Friendly
• Print Ready
• Many more!

The Idea

This is purely inspired by TUTs sites and CNET. I try to make it direct, simple, clean and effective. You can check out the demo too.

Good news for freelancers! This time, we are going to giveaway 3 licenses of Fanurio Time Tracking Software!

About the sponsor

Fanurio is a time tracking and billing software application, highly appreciated by freelancers for its intuitive interface, flexible timer and ability to produce detailed invoices.

Whether you need to round time, use multiple currencies or create invoices with your own layout, Fanurio has the right tools to help you get paid.

Features:

• Track time with little effort
• Analyze your performance
• Get paid for all your work
• Runs on multiple platforms

Comment To Win

• Leave a comment.
• Stated “why the application (prize) would be useful to you“.
• The most convincing posters should get the free licenses.

Terms

• Contest end on 30th April.
• Prizes will be delivered directly from the sponsor, so, please comment using your contactable Email address.

Have fun!

This is for all busy bee web designers- hope you are familiar with CSS and XHTML coding firm XHTML. In my sincere efforts to collect some information about my next tutorial on how to code your designs professionally, I browsed many PSD to XHTML websites- and this caught my attention for long. Point of attraction: their streamlined Order Process that is simple, linear and comprehensible.

Their Order Process is shown in 5 simple steps-

1. Mail Order
2. Order Review
3. Conversion
4. Quality Assurance
5. Delivery

The process is so transparent and straight forward that the clients can track their order at any stage, converse with the team and detect the completion stage. I liked their professional Order Process, their service offerings and the portfolio. So before I begin the tutorial, I decided to write a review of XHTML.PixelCrayons.com.

Introduction:

XHTML.PixelCrayons.com is a specialized web coding service provider that promises pixel precise markup services and design implementation into CMS, Shopping Cart, Skins, Themes, etc. They also offer re-slicing of existing sites and all this with high-end client support and timely delivery.

Services and Work Process

This is what I think is 100% client centric. They would tweak their service offerings for what would suit its client. You could upload your files in PSD, AI, PNG, PDF or even in the existing markup. With XHTML.PixelCrayons.com, you get just any technical requirements you like: HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0 Strict/ Transitional, XHTML 1.1, Search Engine Optimization, Tableless Coding, Dynamic Drop Down Menus, Transparent PNGs and Fluid Width Layouts, sIFR, JS Implementation, Commented CSS, Rollovers includes, Microformats and Accessibility (WCAG 1, Section 508/ DDA).

You can edit the advanced options and layout options and customize your order the way you want.

The work process is quite simple, and the order form self-explanatory. You just have to place an order and wait for your work delivery. You may also mention other specifications about your file (in the Special Comments box). They are in touch with you over phone and instant messaging to take your views and clarifications regarding design implementing and stuff. All-in-all, a seamless client support!

Pricing and Delivery

Their clients bear testimony to the fact that considering the high quality, hand coded, table-less, pixel precise and 100% W3C validated code, their packages are cheaper than others in the market. Web
Designers don’t mind paying more if quality supersedes, but when same quality is for a comparatively lesser price, XHTML.PixelCrayons.com become their choice.

They offer two packages as follows:

The Basic Package – starting at $99

• Markups: HTML 4.01 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Transitional
• W3C Validation: CSS, XHTML & HTML
• I.E 6.x / 7.x, Mozilla Firefox, Safari

The Professional Package – starting at $199

• Markups: HTML 4.01 Transitional, HTML 4.01 Strict, XHTML 1.0 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Strict.
• W3C Validation: CSS2 (Advanced CSS Code Structure), XHTML & HTML Browsers Compatibility: I.E 6.x / 7.x, Mozilla Firefox, Safari 2.x/3.x, Opera, Konqueror.
• Includes: SEO Semantic Code, Load Speed Optimization, Complete Presentation Separation, Maximum Cross-Browser Compatibility.
• Delivery time is fast and quick- 8 hours flat, and you get your professional, hand-coded, pixel precise design code.

Conclusion

This is a good PSD to XHTML site that provides excellent and customizable services. With XHTML.PixelCrayons.com, an SEO friendly, valid CSS/XHTML and W3C Validated code is possible along with price and time scalability.

Winners

• Drew Douglass – 1000 free standard size business cards.

  I would use the business cards to further brand and promote my name as a freelance copywriter and php/wordpress freelancer. Thanks for running this contest, good luck to all!

• Mario Awad – 1 free 18×24 canvas print.

  I’m currently considering freelancing software development… those cards would come in handy… good luck everyone

The winners will be contacted by the sponsor very soon. Thank you everyone who participated. Don’t give up, we will have another giveaway soon!

I’ve just release another premium theme over ThemeForest – Our Magazine. After a success of my first ever premium theme – Our Community, I try to add in more features in this theme. I decided to give away 2 copies of the theme to my readers and here is the winners!

Winners

• Heather Flyte

  I think this theme is exactly what our magazine site needs. It’s got all the features, from clean ad-placement to easy navigation between features. I think it will really help in the redesign.

• Aaron

  Like: I’ve been waiting a long time for someone to design a template that looks similar to the Tuts web designs (aka PSDtuts, Nettuts, etc); the our magazine theme looks quite similar to what I want. A+ design in my opinion.

  Usage: I’d use this theme as a starting point for my iphone game review blog/site. It’s got everything I need built right in to the default layout – video, blog, and flickr rss in the sidebar.

  Thanks and good luck with the contest!

The winners will receive their prizes soon via email. Thank you everyone who participated. Don’t give up, we will have another giveaway soon!

I’ve just release another premium theme over ThemeForest – Our Magazine. After a success of my first ever premium theme – Our Community, I try to add in more features in this theme. I decided to give away 2 copies of the theme to my readers. Below is the list of the features:

Update: Contest closed

Our Magazine come in 2 colors

• White-Gold (default)
• Black-Red

Features

• FEATURED UP TO 7 CATEGORIES:
• Slider headline. Optional to be semi-auto or fully control.
• 4 categories under tabbing.
• Video category.
• 1 Blog alike display category.

• AUTOMATIC IMAGE RESIZING:
• Automatic thumbnail resizing for headline, blog posts and posts listing.
• Using WordPress Media Upload (Strongly recommended) or custome field ( priority to be displayed ).

• POWERFUL THEME OPTION:
• Select the theme color.
• Easy to select featured categories for each section.
• Disable / Enabled categories to be displayed in front page.
• Feedburner feed replacement and optional to display in text.

• USER LINK FEED:
• Easy to setup your own user link feed page.
• Example http://psd.tutsplus.com/ and http://kailoon.com

• UNIQUE ARCHIVES PAGE TEMPLATE:
• Using accordian:
• http://themetation.com/demo/magazine/archives/

• FLEXIBILITY AND FUNCTIONS:
• Almost every elements in front page can be disable or enable.
• Headline, Blog alike and Video category are excluded in recent post section in front page.

• MORE FEATURES:
• Smooth dropdown menu (Category)
• Easy to navigate page menu
• Threaded comment ( up to level 3) and paged comments supported.
• Unique design for comment area.
• Comments and tracbacks separation using tabbing.
• Integrated wp-navi and breadcrumb.
• Widget ready.
• Flickr ( Download plugin to make it works).

Requirements:

• Required php5 and curl enable (for the feed count).

Rules

• Leave only 1 comment here about how are you going to use this theme and what make you love this theme.
• Please post only one comment per person, duplicated comments will be deleted and void.
• Comment box will be accepted until 18^th March 2009, and we’ll randomly generate 2 winners.
• Winners will be contacted via email, so, please leave your comment with your contactable email address.

Finally, my for flashden is up on zazzle. I am so excited to see that! They turn that into T-shirt, mug, mouse pad etc.

The Artwork

The Products

It’s been quite some times since we did some freebies giveaways, and this time we are giving out 1000 pieces of business cards! This contest is proudly sponsored by Uprinting.

Something about our sponsor

UPrinting is a very professional online printing company that you can both get your designs printed, including canvas prints. They are fast in delivery. They are not only doing business card printing, but also covers postcards, brochures, labels and stickers and a lot more. Check out their website see the wide range of products they covered.

If you are going to kick start your own business, you will not want to miss this chance! Business card is a very important marketing tools for all of us.

How to win your free business cards?

Leave a comment at the end of the blog post, describing what you would use the free business cards and/or canvas print for.

• Please post only one comment per person, duplicated comments will be deleted and void.
• Comment box will be accepted until 31^st March, and we’ll randomly generate 2 winners.
• Winners will be contacted via email, so, please leave your comment with your contactable email address.
• Winners in the United States and Canada qualify for free shipping. Shipping fees will apply to winners outside these areas.

Prize

• 1000 free standard size business cards for one reader
• 1 free 18×24 canvas print for one reader

You can choose from any of their stocks for these items.

• Photoshop
• Illustrator