Daring Gourmet - Once Coupled

Daring Gourmet is Kim’s very own foodie heaven. Obsessed with creating brand new recipes or reviving old ones, you can go to her with any request and she’ll make it her mission to give you the perfect recipe. She was using the default Twenty Twelve theme by WordPress, and really wanted to spice her design up – plus add a lot of functionality!

Highly visual archive pages

Just like with her home page, it was important that all archive pages be easily navigable for readers. We stripped down each post to the basics, photo and title, so they could be easily scanned at once.

By keeping just the essentials, photo and title, we allow readers to find just what they’re looking for, without having to wad through tons of pages to find it.

Easily navigable recipe index

Our photo-heavy archive pages, discussed above, were the first step in creating a cohesive reader experience. The second step was to create a central hub where recipes could be found based on a few criteria: grouping or ingredient. Because Kim already had a really clean organization structure in place, it was easy to gather this information and make an index for her, all completely able to update automatically without her putting in any additional effort.

Using a variety of methods, this recipe index was created with the goal of facilitating viewer navigation while removing work from Kim’s to-do list.

Fun, new logo

Already prepared with a very clear idea (including examples!) of what she wanted, producing a logo for Kim was as simple as using my skills to build it. I made a composite of three or so clip art images she liked to achieve a design that showed determination and could be used to further her brand.

Kim already knew she wanted a feminine cow, holding some sort of kitchen utensil. My job was just to make her vision a reality.

More browse-able home page

We started on Kim’s site by revamping her home page: using offset images to showcase her new recipes and a slider to feature seasonal or other relevant content. It was important that we had more posts on the front page, but less content, so readers could find posts that most interested them.

Kim’s food has always shined – it was just a task of giving her a new way to display it. We reorganized her ads and badges to make them complement her site, rather than distract from it.

Non-invasive advertisements

Kim already had advertisements on her site, but wanted them to be a part of her site, rather than just sitting on it. We went about creating a clean way to integrate them by focusing on layout dimensions and ad placement. Ads should be spread throughout her content, rather than restricting her readers screen space at any given moment.

Visit Kim at DaringGourmet.com