The design was done by Noor Al Qahtani, she's an American freelance graphic designer based in Riyadh. Noor studied fashion design and marketing in the U.S. and has her own design blog "Noor Al Qahtani" (previously Little Pink Strawberries). She also runs a popular Middle Eastern cooking blog called Ya Salam cooking, she has an Etsy shop "Blog Me Pretty" and check out her Pinterest I love the stuff she pins!
Noor is a minimalist designer and she makes simple and modern designs. She describes herself as a "minimal/modern style of designer who likes clean spaces and unique looks". Here are some examples of her work:
I love her sense of style which actually reminds me of the Scandinavian look, very simple and elegant with neutral colors. So the idea was to give Blue Abaya a little "face lift" and make it look more organized and less cluttered. I updated the tabs on the menu bar for easier browsing and the sidebar tabs should help the readers to find content easier and give a more general picture of what Blue Abaya contains.
This has been a work in progress and slowly I've been adding the links during the last two months. I have to give credit also to my husband, he has been doing a lot of work on the blog that I couldn't figure out as I'm quite clueless when it comes to these things..There's still a lot of work to do but it's just so time consuming it will have to wait right now. I'm going to remove the Events tab because I feel I'm double posting events and exhibitions on here and on the Blue Abaya Facebook page. If you haven't joined the page do so now to keep updated on events in Riyadh and all around KSA as well as travel tips and cool places to visit.
The banner is a watercolor painting by Aafke Brouwer which she made for me a few years back. I just love the painting so much I will keep it as my banner always! The actual painting is hanging on my living room wall.
I sent Aafke some photos of myself riding a horse that I love at the Dirab stables outside Riyadh and a pic of the magnificent red sand dunes and she came up with the banner painting. I love how the rider is free as a bird and the wind is blowing in her hair.
Aafke's Art blog can be found here: http://aafke-art.com/
I'm very happy with the new look, what do you readers think? Is there anything from the old design you miss? Any suggestions? Any feedback positive/negative/constructive would be appreciated!
If you want to hire Noor you can email her at blogmepretty@gmail.com and check out her portfolio for more of her work. She has some ready made designs for both Blogger and WordPress available at BlogMePretty Etsy shop and you can order a custom made design too.
