Early November was the launch for a contest, attempting to attract the talent and skills of a few great designers. The mission was simple, redesign my existing website with my content, mood, feelings and talents in mind. I wanted a site that could really explain who I am at first glance. Although the entries were few and the submissions were not exactly what I truely wanted; I appreciated the attempts.

There was one entry that really stood out and slapped me. It did exactly what I wanted! Elena from designdisese submitted her first mockup before the end of November and I couldn’t believe the direction she was taking. It was different in my head. She had a great flow of information and the content really popped from the pages.

After a few conversations of tweaking the design and such, she told me, “no more.” Not that she meant no more changes, but no more sneak peeks. She was off to finish the design and surprise me.

I still have only seen the final mockup and not the final design. She has been ill and therefore, I extended the contest until she is able to complete her end of the agreement. I am not hard up for being a stickler on the contest, I want quality and she’s got it!

Elena tackled the project head-on and really accomplished a number of hurdles I once thought I wouldn’t be able to get over. She embedded locations for my video feeds, possible areas for my podcasts and plenty of room for content.

She moved forward with a high contrast, pink, charcoal and brownish colored design that I personally find quite appealing. I guess if you know me, you know I think it fits.

After reviewing the design again recently, I decided I am going to have to make a few modifications to really get the most from this design. I’m going to rid categories almost all together on the public side of my weblog and move primarily to tags.

I am using tags primarily on another project and it seems to be an all-around better idea. Limiting conversations and articles to a specific category is a bit ridiculous. I wish I would have caught on to tags much earlier in my blogging endeavors and utilized them more.

For now, this is what I have to show you. I am totally pumped about the launch of version 4 and I am going to be releasing version 2 and 3 as open sources themes very soon.

Let me know what you think!