I've always been called a developer in my professional life. I do however love design and I like to think I'm not all that horrible at it. On this page I'm showcasing several designs I created over the last two years. They are all weblog related designs. Of course this doesn't mean I'm limited to weblogs only. If you like my work and you're interested in hiring me for a design job, feel free to contact me!

Of course I will update this page as I finish more design work.

Bookalicio.us v2.0

After a little over a year we felt it was time to 'upgrade' the design of Bookalicio.us which is my wife's book review site and blog. The old design had proven to be a bit too narrow and a more versatile homepage was needed to accommodate more different content. A 'retro-victorian' look was born, carefully preserving the branding of the first version of the site. Read more about the design process in this blog post and take a look at the Bookalicio.us here.

My MySpace profile

After creating a profile for bookalicio.us on MySpace I felt I should update my own presence on there as well. My profile pushes the envelope a bit further when it comes to hardcore customization through CSS. MySpace has definitely come a long way. You can read more about MySpace customization in this blog entry I wrote about it.

Bookalicio.us on MySpace

This is the first profile I did using MySpace's 'Profile 2.0' customization. Check out bookalicio.us on MySpace.

My Tumblr blog profile

I've been using Tumblr for smaller blog entries for a while now. I also use it to play with it's awesome design/customization features. My own Tumblelog is a modified version of 'Helvetica', a free theme developed by me.

Splash page for i-marco.nl

A lot of people probably never visit the root of my domain but for those who do I put up a shiny splash page with links to the most important things I have online.

Helvetica

'Helvetica' is my second Tumblr theme. I wanted to do a theme with no graphics and a lot of attention to typography. This is what I came up with. It's currently running on my tumblelog. Just like iBlack (see below) this theme is available for free for anyone who wants to use it.

Stalk-O-Matic

NeilCrosby.com, the lifestream page by my UK friend Neil inspired me to do the Stalk-O-Matic, a single page that displays everything I do on the internet. Stalking has never been this easy! This page is a personal pet project I did in one day. I still quite like the result.

iBlack, a Tumblr theme

I decided to replace the 'side salads' section of this website with a tumblelog. Why? You can read all about that in this entry. Because Tumblr has extremely nice customization features I thought it would be nice to create a theme for it. It's available for free for whoever wants to use it.

Bookalicio.us

Based on the earlier design for pamalicio.us I made this WordPress template for Pam's book review site. We deliberately kept the base layout from pamalicio.us to make it clear that both sites are being run by the same person. Yet I wanted to create a 'reading mood' with this version which I accomplished by changing the color scheme and by shooting my own photo to use in the header, featuring the author of the blog surrounded by her books.

Dark Matter Pro

For a very, very long time I've been wanting a photoblog. I've considered using WordPress but I didn't really think this is the right solution. A while ago I discovered Pixelpost, a true photo-driven publishing tool for photoblogs. There was just one problem: I didn't like any of the available templates. Both in terms of look and feel and in terms of the way they were built. Since complaining wasn't going to solve this problem I decided to design and build my own template from scratch. It's now powering my photoblog. All this evolved into my first premium template. Dark Matter Pro can now be purchased from it's own microsite: darkmatter-template.com. A feature-limited free edition is also available here. The template features proper progressive javascript enhancement, clean XHTML markup and a slick, photo-centric design. Available in dark... and light! Enjoy!

Pamalicio.us

Pamaliciou.us is the online home of my lovely fiancee Pam. The design is a progressive evolution from what I did for Virb.com profile about a year earlier. Powered by WordPress. Design, markup and CSS all made with love by yours truly.

Eurobands.us

Eurobands.us is an online rock magazine run by my girlfriend Pam and a whole bunch of her friends and myself. We're trying to let it grow into a respected online magazine on European rock music. For this site I basically did everything from the first design sketch to the XHTML/CSS, plugin programming, hosting support and of course coaching the lovely ladies to write valid XHTML in their postings!

Maghreb

Maghreb.nl is a premier internet magazine for Moroccan people in the Netherlands. It features news, articles, community pictures, forums and a whole lot more. This project is a fully customized WordPress site where I did the design, the XHTML/CSS, custom plugins and Javascript programming. This site was created after I did Maghreb Magazine which is a related Moroccan magazine. The designs of the two sites are similar to reflect their relation to eachother.

Virb profiles

Virb is the MySpace replacement every web developer/designer must have been waiting for. It allows full customization on your profile with hardly any limit on what can be achieved. Since each profile is basically just one page I decided to not post screenshots of them all on this page. They do appear in this blog posting if you're interested. Even though they're just one page they are nice examples of my design efforts. I've created several profiles on Virb which are listed below:

• My own personal profile on Virb
• My girlfriend Pam's profile
• Swedish Goth/Industrial band Sexydeath
• Steve Chong Photography
• Finnish rock band Day Eleven on Virb

ZoeTown

ZoeTown is a movie workshop / contest organized by the city of Zoetermeer in cooperation with the VPRO (a Dutch broadcaster). For this project I did the design and the conversion to XHTML templates. The backend of this site was done by Pareto, my former employer.

Dutch Directions

Dutch Directions is the first independent Dutch weblog network. It was founded by me, Simon Koelewijn and Max Roeleveld. I designed the logo and the website is a result of a design team effort by Simon Koelewijn and me.

Waterkant.net

Waterkant.Net is the premier portal for everything Suriname. This was quite a tough job because the owner needed to have an enormous amount of content available on every page. I created the design and implemented it in WordPress. In addition to that I created several custom WordPress plugins and a custom PHP frontpage.

The Writer

'The Writer' is one of my first serious attempts in creating a weblog design template. It's available for free download at Pivot Styles

The Writer is a classy template targeted towards content-oriented weblogs such as blogs about literature, history or poetry. The photograph in the header was made by me as well.

i-marco's choice

i-marco's choice is a little side project of mine in which I highlight the world's best weblog designs.

The website uses a modified version of the 'Slick' theme I created for Pivot. This theme has become enormously popular and has been ported to WordPress and Nucleus by other people.

i-marco v3

This website has been redesigned recently. I do however consider the previous design noteworthy enough to showcase it here.

This template will eventually become available under the Creative Commons license as soon as it's been adapted for general use by the masses.

Lush

Lush was my entry for the Typo Theme contest. It ended at an 8th place in the final rankings but has become very popular since it's release. It's a very advanced theme featuring various AJAX/script.aculo.us effects. It's available for free download here and it has already been ported to dotclear.

Working on Lush has really drawn me into AJAX and advanced DOM Javascript which resulted in (among other things) the Backbase powered Archive Explorer plugin and the new site design you're currently looking at.