Fire Studios

In the next installment of FS Interviews, I give Brian Lovin of Elite By Design a ring and we talk about blogging, time management, redesigning, reviews, selling websites, and how to run a popular blog.

Hi Brian, thanks for taking time to answer these questions, could you please open up with a summary of who you are and what you do for our readers?

Thanks for talking with me, Jonathan. I am very impressed with your insightful questions and attention to Elite By Design. (note from Fire G: Flattery will get you everywhere Mr. Lovin)

My name is Brian Lovin. I'm currently a blogger and web designer at Elite By Design. I've been working online for about two years (with some breaks here and there) providing the design community with resources, tutorials, and tips to help them in the web and graphic design world. I'm from the Denver area, however most of my networking occurs online with my readers from around the world.
I started Elite By Design in late 2007 when I was 15, a sophomore in high school. Since then I have grown as a designer and a blogger in ways I could never imagine. From having Elite By Design mentioned in some of the biggest online design sites, to providing information and resources to millions of readers, to regularly communicating with over 2,000 people on Twitter, Elite By Design has been my creative and entrepreneurial outlet for two years. As a Senior, I am now working to rebuild Elite By Design and to renew its status as a high quality source for designer and developers to learn more about web design, Photoshop, and graphic arts.

You run a fairly popular site, Elite By Design, but you had quite a slow down of new content during 2009. what were some of the reasons behind this? Was it a matter of time, motivation, ideas, a combination of those?

Going missing in 2009 is, and has been, one of my biggest regrets with Elite By Design. Here is a brief explanation to my year off:
I am still in high school and last year, junior year, was filled with college applications, college visits, and an intense academic schedule. I had to make the decision to focus on my real life, rather than my online life. I put more attention towards my academic future rather than my website's.
It is interesting to note, however, that in 2008, Elite By Design built up such a strong search engine presence that even during 2009, without posting, traffic to the site remained the same every day.

Just a few weeks ago you relaunched Elite By Design with a brand new look. What were the ideas behind the refresh and what goals were you trying to achieve with the new look? Also, did the review by the popular UXBooth bring any extra weight to some of the design ideas? Where do you go to get inspiration for your designs?

Version 4:

The relaunch of Elite By Design earlier this year represented to me a refresh in my attitude towards blogging. The redesign was a way to motivate me to keep working hard and to keep pushing new content to my readers - sort of like an incentive-based redesign. It is a reminder to me to keep working, keep innovating, and to continue striving to establish Elite By Design as an elite resource for designers.

Version 5:

The new design was meant to be a more streamlined, content-oriented design. The UX Booth review helped me to focus more on the design being easier to use and easier to navigate. I feel that the new design has taken progressive steps to achieving these goals, but as always, web design is an evolutionary process and I will continue making changes throughout 2010.
My inspiration comes from many sources, both in print and online. A large focus of V5 was to create a easy to use, easy to navigate, yet still aesthetically advanced design. Tutorial9, Tuts+, and Smashing Magazine were my main sources of inspiration for the redesign.

You've launched a sister site to EBD titled Web Design Tuts, but you put the site up for sale within a year. What happened to cause this quick turn-around?

I'm a one man team who works two jobs, plays sports every semester of school but this one, has a rigorous academic schedule, and a strong social and family life. Time truly is the issue. I started Web Design Tuts because I knew that it had the potential to be big. In fact, during the first few weeks I had an incredibly strong reception by the design community. My first few posts saw tens of thousands of visits in a very short period of time.
However, 2009 turned out to be a bad time to invest in a new website, considering I was already running short on time to manage Elite By Design. I decided to put the site up for sale to offer another web designer the chance to run a great website with established traffic, content, and a very powerful domain name.
The site, however did not sell. I plan on holding onto Web Design Tuts for a while until I can decide what steps come next.

Final Question: What advice would you give the readers on how to maintain a popular blog or how to build their current sites to pro blog status?

Thank you for the compliment but I don't consider my blog to be extremely popular and I'm no pro blogger at all. However, in my two years working online, I have learned a few things that I believe all new bloggers should know to help them establish themselves and create a strong online reputation.

• Quality over Quantity. I learned this one the hard way. I went through phases where I tried to post every single day. Eventually, the quality of my posts went down and so did my volume of readership. In 2009, I posted two posts throughout the whole year. Regardless, every day Elite By Design received the same amount of traffic.
• Consistency. People hate blogs that aren't consistent. Try to post once a week or even just once a month. Keep it consistent and keep your standards of quality high at all times.
• Be Social. The internet is, by definition, a social element of our world. Network with like-minded people, join Twitter, share other people's blog posts, and start a conversation with one new person every day.