Adii established {radiiate} early in 2008 and I was doing a lot of freelance work for him during the first few months of this year, which eventually lead to him employing me as full-time designer. But before we launched the site all there was was a splash page with contact details. This was not really an issue (business-wise), as Adii still gets a good amount of job requests via his blog.

But we desperately needed somewhere to show off the awesome projects we have been working on through the year, as we had no portfolio to show prospective clients. And that’s where the new site comes in.

The reason we took so long to launch the site, was that we were only working on it when we had time in-between all those client projects, or when we were waiting for client feedback.

I must say that all of us at {radiiate} are extremely proud of our latest creation. We feel it showcases a few of our best projects over the last year, and is testament to how good Adii, Foxinni and myself work together as a team. And for those of you who follow my blog can now see why FRESH01 goes long periods without updates – because I am kept very busy at my day job!

The reason for this was that I upgraded FRESH01 to beta 2 of WordPress 2.7 on Thursday last week, and it seems like the download manager plugin I was using (WP-DownloadCounter) didn’t quite agree with the new WordPress. I updated the plugin to the latest version, but it didn’t help. I even downgraded my WordPress install back to 2.6.3, but the issue still persisted.

I decided to uninstall my download manager plugin and go with a other option, WP-Download Manager, instead, and luckily that solved my problem. Honestly, I liked my old plugin better, but there’s not much I can do about that!

So this was just a note to let you know that everything is back to normal, and you can download all my free themes as you always did. And I’ll probably wait for the final release of WordPress 2.7 before upgrading!

All these designers should be well known to most of you, so by no means do I feel I’m exposing you to something new (if I am, then that’s awesome!). These are simply designers who I feel have achieved great success in the web design industry and motivates me to be a better designer.

So without further ado, here are my 7 favorite web designers:

WeFunction

WeFunction is a design agency run by Liam Mckay. They write quality design related articles and have a host of resources over there that are just as good. The icons on my blog is actually courtesy of WeFunction! I love the subtle grunge styling of the site, whilst not being overwhelming or distracting.

Rob Goodlatte

Rob Goodlatte’s site is “grungy”, whilst maintaining a very professional appearence. The site has a decent grid structure which organizes the content nicely. His site  one of the best uses of Flash image replacements on headings. It just adds something different and refreshing to the overall look of the site.

Rob writes good articles which shows that he definitely knows a thing or two about interface design, even though he’s been pretty quiet for the last couple of months, but I hope he picks up the speed again soon.

Matt Brett

I love Matt’s site because of the personality it brings across. The moment you see it you have a good idea of who you’re dealing with. The design is just awesome and I feel Matt is definitely a trendsetter for ‘grunge’ design.

Marius Roosendaal

This has been a favorite of mine for a long time. Super clean design and layout is what makes Marius’ site stand out for me. He makes awesome use of javascript for his portfolio items. The overall feel is so simple and minimalistic, but yet his immense attention to detail makes it very interesting. The style switcher is definitely a nice touch!

Elliot Jay Stocks

Elliot needs no introduction. The ex-Carsonified designer gone freelancer is in my mind one of the top guys in the industry. He writes clever articles and speaks at many top web-related conferences. He’s got some serious talent and skills and his personal site’s design is a testimony of that.

Carsonified

Everybody knows Carsonified, and I bet everyone wants to work for them! They organize some of the most influential events in the industry, like FOWA, FOWD and FOM. Need I say more?

avalonstar

Avalonstar is the blog of Bryan Veloso. The reason I like this design is because of how unique it is. You’ll have a hard time finding a similar looking design, and for me that really makes him stand out from the crowd.

The attention to details on avalonstar is amazing, even the less important parts are really well done (check out his about page…). The current design is actually version 25 of the blog. So he redesigns quite often, and I’m looking forward to the next one.

Conclusion

So there you have a few of my favorite designers. I obviously have many more, but this is just a selection of some of the guys who I feel are at the top of their game. As you may have realised, I am a sucker for grunge design that still maintains readable and accessible layouts and content.

I’m sure most of you would know all these guys, and would agree with me that they’re all awesome designers.

Who are you favorite designers who inspire you to be a better designer? Would love to get some feedback from you in the comments…

Collis and the gang over at Envato are really on a roll. It sometimes feels to me like they are releasing new sites on a daily basis.

They already have have a number of digital market places (Flashden, AudioJungle, ThemeForest) and a bunch of tutorial sites that cover nearly every area of creative/multimedia design (PSDTUTS, AUDIOTUTS, VECTORTUTS, NETTUTS). And don’t forget the holy grail of freelance blogs, FreelanceSwitch.

They are definitely running a tight network of sites, which deliver very valuable services to the online design community.

Yesterday evening they announced the launch of yet another blog in their network. The new site is called Creattica daily. It’s basically a design news blog that will feature articles and resources on a wide variety of design-related topics. Here’s an excerpt from their About page:

Hi, welcome to Creattica Daily, a site of daily news and links for creatives and designers. We cover a broad range of creative inclinations from graphic to product design, interactive to motion, advertising to articles.

They’ve only got four posts up for the launch, but it looks very promising. So I subscribed to the RSS feed (seems like I was the first one) and will be be checking out the newest offering from the ever growing Envato. Head over there and take a look for yourself.

You’ll see I went for a completely different look that I feel shows of my personal design style much more than the old design did. Hopefully the new design is a testimony of how much I have learnt and grown design wise over the past year.

I’ll post a more in-depth look at the new design in the following week, with links and credits to all the resources I used to create this new design, so stay tuned for that. I just wanted to get the new design out today after spending the weekend working on the finishing touches.

I would appreciate any feedback and criticism (constructive, ofcourse! ), so feel free to give your opinion in the comments to this post.

My situation since last year has changed quite a bit, and seeing as I no longer freelance for a living, my needs/requirements for this blog has also changed. Plus I have become bored of the current design (fellow designers will know how I feel ). So the obvious thing for me to do is redesign my blog.

I have already started on a new design and hope to have it up and running by the end of this month. I plan on changing my approach to running the site a bit. Instead of marketing myself, I’ll focus on writing quality articles on design and WordPress. I want to release more free themes, and I even have plans to enter the premium themes market.

The new design is already looking good, and I’m super excited about the relaunch. Stay tuned for more news on the launch date…

The details have since been sorted out, so I can finally let the cat out of the bag. Since the beginning of this year, a great deal of my freelancing work came from Adii. We have built up a really good working relationship during the course of the last few months. And since being together in the offices it has been even better for us to work together, as we can communicate face to face, and not through emails and Basecamp. Really speeds up the process quite a bit.

Also, Adii recently started {radiiate}, a creative web solutions company, and that’s were most of my freelance work for him came from. Eventually the work load from {radiiate} got too much for one man to handle. And seeing that myself and Adii work together so well, Adii offered me a job as Senior Designer at {radiiate}. And I gladly accepted .

Funny thing is that I started freelancing to avoid getting an office job, and look at me now. Exactly the opposite has happened. But I don’t regret my decision at all. With the new job I get to focus on what I love, which is designing and building websites, while Adii deals with clients, admin and running his business.

{radiiate} has been off to a great start and we’ve been hard at work on client projects. We also plan on launching the company website soon. Lots of hard work lay ahead, but the future looks to be a bright one .

The only part of working from home that got to me was the isolation. And even with the internet being the social networking wonder that it is, I have always believed that “virtual”(or “online”, if you wish) communication will never be a substitute for real life social interaction.

So in an attempt to save myself from becoming a complete social retard, I moved into some very awesome offices on Monday with my friend Adii. I must give full credit to Adii, as the offices were completely his idea, and it is completely his office . I basically just work there on a “rent-a-desk” kind of setup. Which is great for me, because all the admin and work of getting the space set up was his problem ( thanks Adii ).

The office is still a work in progress. A few pieces of furniture, plus a poster or four from Signalnoise, are still on their way. I’ll post some pictures of our new workspace as soon as we’ve kitted everything out.

As you can tell, I’m super excited about these current happenings in my freelance journey, and there are a few other exciting plans that I can’t share just yet… so stay tuned for updates soon.

Anybody can register and upload themes. The great thing is that the WordPress guys are putting in some extra effort to ensure that the themes in the directory are top notch and fully functional. And if the plugin directory is anything to judge by, we will soon have a directory full of awesome free WordPress themes.

After finishing and releasing my latest free theme, Scruffy, earlier today, I went ahead and submitted the theme to the new directory. Now I’m just waiting for the theme to be inspected, reviewed and (hopefully) approved. I will post an update as soon as WordPress notify me whether or not I made the cut. Wish me luck!

*UPDATE: Immediately after I clicked the “Publish” button for this post, I received an email from WordPress that my theme has been accepted in the directory. So I pretty proud to announce my first free theme in the WordPress theme directory! Check it out…