KN Work // A Continuous Lean Redesigned
July 27, 2009 // Blogs + Clothing + Design + Kitsune Noir + Work

Good Monday morning everyone! I thought I’d start off the day with a little announcement of a project that I worked on that went live over the weekend. Some of you might be familiar with A Continuous Lean, a men’s fashion and lifestyle blog run by Michael Williams in New York. I’ve been a fan of ACL for quite a while now, I first mentioned him last June, and since then we’ve been on each others internet radar.

A couple months ago Michael wrote me asking me if I’d be interested in redesigning his site, and I totally jumped at the chance. He told me that he liked the general layout of Kitsune Noir, how it was well organized and easy to navigate, and that he wanted something similar without being a total copy. He also wanted things to be kept rather simple and uncluttered.

A Continuous Lean was previously using the standard Wordpress.com template, so there was little to no styling around the blog. So I decided to stick with the basics of black, white, cream and orange. The orange was inspired by the Denver Broncos orange, which I think gives it a nice kick. I also didn’t want the few images used to be boring so I threw textures onto a number of items, giving them a slight feel of age and a nod to the fashion content on the site.

As a point of reference, the Wordpress theme used was called Magatheme, which looked like this before I completely ripped the whole thing apart. I left very few elements of the original design intact, but it was a theme that was well put together and made it easier to customize.

I have to get a major shout out to my old friend Adam Farris my tech guy. While I can design and fiddle around with HTML and CSS alright on my own, Adam is my tech guru who works absolute magic behind the scenes. Without his tech wizardry ACL and Kitsune Noir would not have seen the light of day.

Be sure to check out A Continuous Lean and give Michael some love!

Bobby

  1. I realized I never comment, though I love waking up to your blog—maybe it’s the extra step of leaving Google Reader, but job well-done on the site. It’s always a great feeling to flip the switch and make something public.

    ps — absolutely loving the smiley face at the bottom.

    Comment by Jonnie — July 27, 2009 #

  2. looks terrific – good job.
    Love the weathered look on the logo and bars underneath, it looks really great. Actually been wanting to learn how to do similer texturing for a project I’m working on right now.
    Really nice.

    Comment by Philip — July 27, 2009 #

  3. [...] — Grace Jones at the Hollywood Bowl / La Vie en Rose — Beer float winners! / Food GPS — Kitsune Noir redesigns A Continuous Lean / Kitsune Noir — Remembering Julius Shulman / Design Notes — Lily Allen fronts Chanel / FWD — [...]

    Pingback by B+S Notes—July 27, 2009 — July 27, 2009 #

  4. Looks amazing, Bobby – congrats! I love ACL and +KN, it’s great to see two super sites come together.

    Comment by Rob G — July 27, 2009 #

  5. What Rob G said!

    Comment by Llywarch — July 27, 2009 #

  6. Great post – Just subscriped to your RSS feed.. Thanks
    Very interesting post – Might be old new, but it was new to me. Thanks.

    Comment by daren — July 28, 2009 #

  7. S’funny. I saw the post on ACL about changes happening mid-stream and I thought they looked super great, wondering to myself, who was behind it?

    Knowing it was you somehow makes it even better. Like peanut butter and chocolate or two other favorite things mixed together.

    Very awesome.

    Comment by Glass — July 28, 2009 #

  8. Completely tore my baby apart!

    Nice redesign though, hope you don’t mind if I snatch a few concepts….

    Comment by Bryan Helmig — July 29, 2009 #