Also, in celebration of the redesign  launch we are giving away some awesome prizes that were kindly donated. More on the redesign, new features and giveaway below.

Many of you might be thinking, “Man, this is much different from its predecessor,” and you are absolutely right. A few reasons for this:

1. When I first started The Design Cubicle I would have never imagined what it turned into today. I was more or less only  looking for a quick way to share my thoughts on a customized pre-made template.
2. The previous version did not reflect my design sensibilities, which are inspired heavily by print design, typography and attention to even the smallest details.
3. The previous version was just much too stark; color was needed!
4. We all get tired of design at some point (as I’m sure I’ll eventually say about this design).
5. After two years of running this site, digging into my analytics, and watching comments and tweets, I’ve discovered what interests people the most and how they interact with it. Thus, I’ve eliminated a lot (sidebar and its items in particular) and brought more focus to the content — which is the reason people visits blogs, right? You will even notice I’ve eliminated banner ads and junk along the old sidebars. I wanted more focus on my content, and aimed to achieve that through both the design and the quality of the articles I deliver.

On typography and color

Coming from a traditional print design background, it’s no secret that I have a deep love for typography and layout, so it was only natural that this design embodied this passion. Also, since the majority of websites are 90% text (this website about 98% text) I felt the most important function was placing emphasis on the typography and compliment it with subtle details, patterns and other special touch.

After sharing a few shots and teasers on Dribbble a month or so ago, many of you enjoyed the new ‘The Design Cubicle’ masthead, which I’ve decided to substitute from a site logo to more of a site masthead(?). Reasoning: The site is more of an information source than it is a brand or company (and personally I am registered under Brian Hoff Design, LLC for my work).

As for the typefaces used throughout, the italicized serif for the mastheads ‘The’ is set in H&FJ’s Sentinel while the Design, Cubicle, and faint TDC utilize the beautiful Tungsten. Design also incorporates a subtle drop shadow that I created and saved as a pattern in Photoshop and was cut at the inset (the white border between the type and the patterned drop-shadow).

The body copy is set in FF Dagny Web Pro using Typekit, which renders amazingly — specifically at very small sizes — since it was optimized to read better for use on any screen (look for use of fonts withWeb Pro in it’s name for best optimized results).

The red / orange background color and grey textured body background was inspired by a book cover design a saw a few months ago in Princeton, NJ. The color scheme stuck out in my mind when redesigning the site, so I decided to go with it. I am also tinkering around with the idea of changing the color scheme and typefaces monthly, to give the site a special, personalized touch and encourage readers to visit the site more (not just read via the ugly formatting of most RSS readers), so stay on the look out for that.

On the layout

The layout was one of the toughest and most limiting factors when redesigning. Two-years of formatting over 200 articles would have caused an over-workout  to completely restructure the main content area — specifically images that were originally made to be 500px wide — so I decided to keep the content to 500px to avoid too many headaches later on in the development stages.

Since I decided to eliminate the previous sidebars (they were getting too lost in the commotion) containing Twitter, Facebook, RSS and Hiring instructions, I opted to place this at the very top, while the new Availability area will be updated frequently to let potential clients know when I am able to take on additional freelance design work. I often find myself responding to emails, unfortunately denying clients work because I am at my max workload at the time of contact. Hopefully this streamlines things a bit. Rolling over this link brings up links to my Project Worksheets which are my questionnaires I provide all of my clients prior to working together. This helps to improve the initial contact and my workflow of taking on new work.

The bottom area / footer now contains information about myself, as well as Topics which you can browse if you are looking for something particular. You can always check out the new Search to find what you want as well.

On the development

I’ve had the opportunity to work with the talented developers / designers and friends Trent Walton and Dave Rupert on the development of this site. They truly detailed some beautiful front-end and backend markup using HTML5 and CSS3. We all really had a great time collaborating on this and can honestly say that they are some of the most talented guys I know.

I was going to write about the development and technologies used on this site, but I thought who better to hear it from than straight out of the horses mouths. I’ve invited both Trent and Dave to write an upcoming article on the development process, technologies implemented, and HTML5 / CSS3 techniques used throughout this site. Come back to read about this very soon and in the meantime make sure you check out Paravel, and their nifty “pet project”, The Many Faces Of.

New feature: Notebook

You might have noticed a new link: Notebook. This will be replacing our Sweet Tweets weekend articles. I find that knowing and staying informed in the design community is great for growth and improvement for any designer — plus who doesn’t like to discover awesome “designery-links” and informative articles? The Notebook will be updated daily instead of once-weekly (like that of Sweet Tweets) with high-quality articles about web and print design, development, to helpful resources and useful applications, and more. We even created its own separate RSS feed so you don’t miss out on all the good stuff around the web. I hope you all enjoy this new section, and if you find anything of top-quality don’t be hesitant to send it my way.

Giveaway and prizes

If you have any other questions or curious about the redesign / changes you can always send me an email or even feel free to ask away on Twitter. I encourage you all to express your feedback and if you see anything wrong or showing up strange let me know about it.

Okay, enough about the new site. We have some really great prizes to giveaway via our very generous friends and sponsors. Let’s get started.

1- Subernova - (Two) free project management licenses

Our friends at Subernova have kindly offered two lucky readers the chance to win one of two free 1-year licenses (value of $149.99 each) to their awesome and beautifully designed project management tool.

For those unfamiliar with Subernova, it’s a web-based app that allows designers and freelancers to track projects and clients, time track, keep up with milestones, invoice, and much more. You can run it from the Web, Desktop, iPhone and even the iPad.

2- Ugmonk - (Two) free t-shirts of choice

Ugmonk is contributing two free t-shirts of your choice for two winners! If you haven’t checked out the Ugmonk shop you seriously have been missing out on some beautiful t-shirts by designer, Jeff Sheldon. I own 3 of them myself (And then I woke up, Path to Nowhere, and One Hundred).

3- Smashing Magazine book

Smashing magazine has donated their new book to one of our readers.

“The Smashing Book is a printed book about best practices in modern Web design. The book shares technical tips and best practices on coding, usability and optimization and explores how to create successful user interfaces and apply marketing principles to increase conversion rates. It also shows how to get the most out of typography, color and branding so that you end up with intuitive and effective Web designs.”

4- Billings for Mac - (Three) Time Billing licenses

Our long-term friends over at Marketcircle are providing three (3) free licenses to their Professional Time Billing software: Billings.

“Billings logical workflow and intuitive interface makes quoting, invoicing and time tracking simple.”

I even love the Billings Touch app for the iPhone and iPod Touch — great compliment to their awesome desktop app.

5- Uprinting - (Five) sets of 250 stickers

Uprinting is kindly providing 5 readers 250 stickers / labels for free. The stickers sizes can either be 2 x 3.5″, 2 x 4″, or 3 x 3″ printed in full color on 70lb Label Matte coating. Includes free ground shipping as well, but eligibility is limited to US residents only (must be 18 and above to enter).

6- Neenah Paper - goodies-n-knicknacks for 5 winners

Over the past year I’ve had the opportunity to meet many great new friends through Twitter and the team at Neenah Paper is definitely one of them. For those unfamiliar with Neenah Paper, they offer some of the most beautiful papers I’ve ever seen, felt and smelled (yes, I’m a weird designer like that). Not only do they offer a range of gorgeous papers, but they also run a helpful blog, Against the Grain, of which I was interviewed awhile back:

“Against the Grain is about creating conversation and building a sense of community.  Our inspiration was to create a space where designers could go for information, ideas and inspiration.”

Neenah was extremely thoughtful and put together a huge box of cool things that they sent my way to give out to all of you. Items include Neenah-branded laptop cases, water bottles, pens, flashlights, envelope cutters and more! I will be putting together 5 “gift bags” of these items and shipping them off to 5 readers.

7- UAO Agency - (Two) copies of A List Apart’s HTML5 for Web Designers book

UAO Agency is a remarkable creative content agency that helps businesses be creative online. To celebrate the redesign of The Design Cubicle we are offering two copies of the premier A List Apart book: HTML5 for Web Designers! The book is a must-have for web designers looking to design and develop beautiful websites using the latest in web standards. As the website states: “The HTML5 spec is 900 pages and hard to read. HTML5 for Web Designers is 85 pages and fun to read. Easy choice.” Ships in June.

How to win

Comment on this post with a few thoughts on the redesign along with which item(s) you are most interested. I will be selecting the winners at random on May 31st by email (make sure you leave a valid email address in the email portion of the comment form). Also, sending out a tweet or two couldn’t hurt your chances either.

Thank you: Over the course of the past 2-months of this redesign I’ve received much appreciated help, feedback, and encouragement by so many of you I don’t know where to begin. Huge thanks to Trent and Dave for their amazing development and pixel-pushing skills and being patient with any last minute or crazy nit-picking comments. @DanielMall, @GregPAsh, @Yarcom, @StefanHartwig, and anyone else that had a look at the site before launch and offered feedback: Thank you. I appreciate all of your wonderful encouragement and comments on Dribbble as well. As always, to everyone that has supported myself and this site, I cannot thank you enough! It’s been fun redesigning this site and glad to present it to all of you. I hope you enjoy it!

First off, let’s have a look at some exclusive sneak peeks…

Feel free to share your thoughts about these little snippets in the comments below. Positive and negative criticism is welcomed; just be classy about it.

Some words on the redesign

I’m looking to have this fully launched by (hopefully, some point) in the month of May. As of right now that date is right on schedule. The closer the design gets to finalization the quicker I’ll have it up and running. I’m also thrilled and excited to be working with the talented and awesome Trent Walton (personal website) and Paravel teammates who will be handling all back-development on this redesign. I’ve been really grateful to be able to meet some really great people online (through Twitter, Dribbble, etc.) and I felt Trent and his team would be the perfect fit (look forward to some pixel-pushing magic on this redesign!).

One of the toughest (or I should say limiting) factors of this redesign is having to fit within old (this versions) formatting limitations since I have nearly 275 articles and images prepared that were suited for a specific size. I had to be sure to take into account for this older formatting; mostly the 500px wide content area, which only left me with around 450 (or so) pixels to stay within page width standards to plan other elements. Also, I wanted the redesign to suit my particular design tastes. I feel that many of the more popular blogs out there have the same “big name” feel and flow to it, while I’ve always thought of my blog to be a bit more personal than others with similar subscriber counts. In a way, I’m bringing this design back to basics of which I started it.

It was time for me to custom build my home. This version was modified from an existing premium template with customized plugins; as a designer I needed something to claim as my own. Also, having started out not fully expecting what this blog would turn into today I would have planned a bit differently. Over time I’ve seen what works well and what doesn’t on my site, as well as areas of interest (or non-interest) of my readers. These considerations were also taken into action for the redesign.

The overal redesign will be much more open, allowing content to breathe more, thus improving the overall readability and usability of this site. Once I fully launch the redesign I will go into much more depth about the decisions I made and elements I took into consideration and why. Don’t want to give away too much upfront. :)

In other news

If you haven’t heard about the newly launched Design-Swap yet, it is a website promoting collaboration between designers started by new friends Yaron Schoen and Trent Walton. I’m excited to announce that myself and Dan Mall (Twitter) are up for the first swap. I’m definitely looking forward to collaborating with Dan on this swap; a designer and friend whose work I greatly admire. One of my favorite designed sites on the web that he happened to design and art direct is Housing Works; a great example of beautiful imagery, hierarchy, content flow and layout.

Be sure to check out Design-Swap, its beautifully designed website, and upcoming swap between Dan and myself.

BrianHoff.net featured in upcoming inspiration book

I’m also excited to announce that my portfolio site, BrianHoff.net, will be featured in the upcoming book—due out in September—The Web Designer’s Idea Book Volume 2: The Latest Themes, Trends and Styles in Web Design. You can pre-order your copy now on Amazon if  you like. If you are not familiar with the book, Volume 1 is a great addition to your book collection packed with 250-pages of beautiful examples of web design.

Stay posted shortly for more upcoming news on the redesign. The site will most likely be down for about 2 days before the launch goes live, but I will definitely keep you all posted before that happens. I will also be giving away some pretty awesome prizes on the launch so make sure you don’t miss it by grabbing our RSS or Email updates.

Now, here’s what’s going on: A number of factors have recently played into the lack of new articles as of late, but nonetheless we will resume normal posting very soon. I appreciate your patience and I will  hopefully not disappoint when normal posting resumes (around 2 articles per week).

Reason #1: Two weeks ago, we switched over to a VPS, so we experienced some down time because of it. We have been receiving an all-time high traffic level and because of this needed to move over to our own Private Server; it’s a good thing (minus the downtime). However, in this change some of our database files went a little corrupt (basically our caching system) and caused our home page to not show the newest posts (it was stuck on the Designers’ Confidence article), even though there were a few new ones written after the middle of March. Here are the ones you might have missed: Mac and Web Apps for Maintaining a Graphic Designer Lifestyle, 16 Common Freelancing Mistakes and Misconceptions, and Sweet Tweets #37. This might have caused many of you to think I haven’t posted in a month.

Reason #2: I have been very busy on many new and exiting projects and doing my best to maintain it all. I’ve recently had the opportunity to work with some great clients and other respected designers and have been highly focused on putting out great work and pushing my own personal, creative boundaries. At this time I cannot speak much on the projects, but I do promise to keep you all up-to-date once I can say more. One project that is underway is the redesign of The Design Cubicle, which I am extremely excited about. More on that soon!

On a positive note, sometimes it is good for everyone to step aside from something for a little time; it gives us a new perspective and direction and hopefully this few week break will bring an even larger positive change to the future of The Design Cubicle; more fresh and informative articles!

I appreciate all of your continued support, care and patience. I hope all of you are well and creating great, beautiful things.

Sincerely,

Brian

I only hope in someway I have helped to enlighten or inspire you in 2009 and look forward to bring even more energy and passion to TDC in 2010. Below is a month-by-month recap of 2009′s Best Articles on The Design Cubicle.

January

12 Common Photoshop Mistakes, a list to help educate new designers and “users” of Photoshop, not only become popular via  TDC readers, but was 1 of 3 articles that hit the front page of Digg (accumulating 1,500+ Diggs).

Another January article shedding some light on the topic of What You Should Get From A Logo Designers, was an articled focused at both designers and those looking to hire a design professional. The post walks through all the files and formats and received 59 great comments.

February

How to drive traffic to your design blog provides personal insight into a few valuable tips that drove The Design Cubicle from the early stages. With 248 retweets on Twitter and 129 comments, this article still circulates around the web and Twitter quite frequently.

March

With the new year around the corner, its always good to start planning (or re-planning) your business, especially if you are a freelancer. The article, 28 Must Read Articles for Growing Your Freelance Design Business, highlights essential tools, resources, promotional tips and other articles that will expand any business.

April

April was quite a solid month for The Design Cubicle. With articles such as 50 Creative Business Cards of Graphic Designers, 600+ Free Design, Twitter and Social Media Icons, and 13 Beneficial WordPress Plugins For Your Design Blog, TDC had an impressive amount of positive feedback through comments, community contributions (designers participated to submit their own business cards) and traffic.

May

Articles that include 25 One Page Portfolio Websites of Designers on Twitter and The Hardest Part of Being a Designer were two popular articles that would not be possible without the participation of other designers on Twitter.

June

June marked the most successful giveaway and a popular article on the topic of typography: 15 Typography Books to Help You Learn and Love Typography. The book giveaway resulted in 116 comments with 2 lucky winners.

July

Another productive and memorable month was July. The logo-focused month not only provided information such as, 20 Questions to Ask Clients Prior to Designing a Logo and thought-provoking tips on How To Make A Flexible Logo, but I also gave away free logo services to one lucky reader.

August

August was more freelance and productivity-focused with popular articles that include:

» What to Include In Your Design Contracts
» How To Become A More Effective, Proficient and Informed Designer
» The ‘Hows’ of Pricing Your Design Work

September

September was bit of a slower month of new articles (hey, we call get busy from time to time) but I managed to follow up to last years popular post 10 Common Typography Mistakes (2008) with ten more.

October

TDC kicked it up a notch from the slower September with memorable articles such as:

» Content Heavy Websites with Beautiful Structure, Layout and Hierarchy (an astonishing 431 retweets on Twitter)
» How a design blog is attractive to clients – showcasing the benefits of a design blog and how it can built trust and stronger relationships with clients

November

Last month, November, was TDCs highest traffic month of the year. Four articles,consuming 216 comments and a combined 1,970, that include:

• What a logo does not have to be or do
• Custom WordPress blog design checklist and walkthrough
• Questions to ask clients before designing their website
• Typography is the backbone of good web design

We also  reached 10,000 subscribers in November, launched a more personal site, behoff.com and become a part of Smashing Magazine’s Smashing Network.

December

The ‘Vintage Posters’ post helped to inspire new color palettes and showcase beautiful typography. It also accumulated 530 retweets and 40 great comments.

What’s in store for 2010?

For the past few months I have been in the re-design phase of The Design Cubicle. Let’s just say, this is one of the toughest projects I’ve worked on to date, especially since it involves designing for myself. Hopefully in the next 2 months you will be looking at a brand new, custom TDC blog!

I am also working on a new ‘Typography Repository’ that will aggregate the highest quality, educational typography articles and videos that should be launching quite soon so stay tuned for that. The aim of the site is to help teach typography, not just inspire. Many articles out there show beautiful examples but few actually teach you how to improve your typography. To me, typography has always been the science of design, but an element that really sets apart the “men from the boys.”

I also look forward to bring more thought-provoking, discussion driven posts to The Design Cubicle. Bring back more of the educational aspect of design.

On a more personal note, I am also in talks with teaching at a local college and looking into speaking a design events. In short, I want to get more active in the design community.

What is FOWD?

The Future of Wed Design is 2 day conference that takes place in London, New York City and Miami. The event, run by the folks at Carsonified, is aimed at creatives, designers and anyone else who cares about web design.

Featuring some of the best web designers in the field, speakers include a few well known names such as Dan Cederholm (Simplebits), Elliot Jay Stocks, Jason Santa Maria, Dan Rubin, Bill Buxton (Microsoft) and more.

Topics covered will include ‘Real World Accessibility for Web Designers’, ‘WordPress Theme Development for Web Designers’, ‘How to Design Effective Web Content’, and ‘Best Practices in Web Typography’ — to name a few.

Hope to see some of you there! Tickets are still available if you would like to attend, but if you are unable to make it I will be posting a recap here on TDC, so make sure you subscribe.

Remember you can also follow me on Twitter and the hashtag #TDCFOWD on November 17th for live updates.

The Top 10 Reader Selected TDC Posts

1. 50 Design Studios from each of the 50 States (2 votes)
2. How to create interactive PDF forms to impress your clients (3 votes)
3. How to Drive Traffic to Your New Design Blog (4 votes)
4. Is Twitter Taking Over RSS?… Prepare Your Blog Today! (5 votes)
5. 26 Business Cards of Graphic/Web Designers on Twitter (5 votes)
6. 50 Creative Business Cards of 50 Graphic Designers (5 votes)
7. 12 Common Photoshop Mistakes and Malpractice (6 votes)
8. How to Become a Better Graphic Designer (7 votes)
9. 10 Common Typography Mistakes (8 votes)

and the top favorite post…
Anatomy of a Successful Graphic Designer’s Website (11 votes)

To see all of the votes visit search.twitter.com and search #designcubicle. Thanks again to all those who entered the giveaway… I greatly appreciate all the tweets and retweets of your favorite Design Cubicle posts! Also congratulations to the six winners and for those of you who did not win this time around, I promise you there will be plenty of other chances, so stay subscribed!

Phase 1: Defining the goal

The goal was to create a logo that was memorable, represented the cubicle concept and showed a sense of community and connectedness, as discussed above. I also wanted it to be simple and smart, since I am a firm believer that less is more. It also had to work well in various sizes, since it was to be used as the site’s favicon and other smaller online propaganda.

Phase 2: Sketching and visual brainstorming

Sketching is an extremely important step of any design process. It helps to get your ideas down quickly and without attention to unnecessary detail in the beginning. Below, you can see where the final logo was starting to take form in the sketches circled in red.

Phase 3: Bringing the above ideas to the computer

Once I had some groundwork to pull from, I opened up Illustrator and did some “computer sketching”, playing around with various combinations and more ideas. Notice below that some of the ideas steered away from the initial goal, but sometimes turning another direction gets you back on the correct path — Guess that’s why it’s called a creative “process.”

Phase 4: Narrowing it down

Most of the time I find myself going back to repeat phases 2 and 3 before narrowing my ideas down to two or three choices. This phase is usually the point where I start playing around with variations and typefaces of the ideas from phase 3.  This stage was particularly hard for me for this specific logo because I like both the right and left side variations.

Phase 5: Making the decision

While the final decision was tough, I decided to go with the “double cubicle”. I felt it had more of a suggestion of cubicles and ‘DC’. It connected back to the goal of portraying a sense of community and connectedness with two cubicles that were intertwined. What do you think?

Which variation in Phase 4 do you prefer?

Feedback is always appreciated and serves as a valuable step in the creative process. Feel free to add a comment or share your thoughts.