Careers blogger wants your creativity for website design

Alexis Grant

I blog about careers, the new world of work and how to make your own luck.

My target audience is go-getters and people thinking about taking a leap in life; a lot of writers read my site as well. Aside from helping new visitors quickly understand what I'm about, my main goal is to get people to sign up for my newsletter.

http://alexisgrant.com

Simplicity is good. I like white space.

I'd like to use a blue color scheme, several different shades of blue, perhaps with orange as the opposite color. (Maybe a color scheme like this? http://www.colourlovers.com/palette…sing_faith. I love the color used in the nav bar on my current site.)

I also like handwriting fonts and in some cases, all lowercase letters.

Page 1: Home page
A kind of summary page that gives the reader a good sense of what I'm about -- I want this landing page to be my home screen rather than the blog, which is how my site is set up now. That means this page should NOT have a navigation bar. (See first two examples of sites below to see what I mean by a landing page.)

I'd like most or all of this page to show without the reader having to scroll.

What I'd like it to include:
+ Header: includes my name (Alexis Grant) as most prominent, plus tagline (Make your own luck in your career & life)
+ Option to sign up for the newsletter
+ Show the beginning my most recent blog post and let people click over to the blog (which will be Page 2)
+ Two other main sections: about & contact, guides & courses
+ 2-3 recommendations (What people are saying)
+ Logos of publications that have featured me (Example is attached, but it doesn't have to be presented this way)
+ Photo of me (attached)

Page 2: Blog page (what's my home screen on my current blog: http://alexisgrant.com). Main goal is to get people to read posts, but I also want them to be able to navigate from there to other parts of the site.

Should include:
+ Same header as Page 1
+ Nav bar
+ Prominent opt-in box so people sign up for the newsletter
+ Social media buttons (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, RSS)
+ Search option
+ Widgets (see current site): About Alexis, popular posts, next webinar (with signup button), plus one that's not there now that says: Posts on Writing, Careers, Entrepreneurship, Travel, Social Media (kind of like a categories widget)
+ Publication logos, similar to the ones on Page 1 but can be placed differently, for example, perhaps in the sidebar or footer
+ Newsletter signup box at the end of each blog post
+ Fonts that work together smoothly

Not that I know of -- I'll add to this as I see the designs start coming in!

I love creativity, so I'm excited to see what you can come up with!