Disclosure: I’m involved in business with The Blog Herald owners, Splashpress Media, and also blog at 901am, another Splashpress site.

The redesign of The Blog Herald, where I blogged when it was maintained by Matt Craven, is long overdue. The concept change when the Herald was bought by Splashpress didn’t fit the old layout (by Chris Pearson by the way). Honestly, I think The Blog Herald should’ve gotten some design love under Matt Craven as well, but then again I’m a bit picky when it comes to these things. Go figure.

Brian Gardner is the guy behind a bunch of free themes, as well as a few for Performancing. It looks like this nowadays:

My buddy Tony Hung, editor of The Blog Herald, have got a launch post up. Check it out, and click around a bit. What do you think?

I think they went the right way with focusing on the features to the left, with news in the middle column a little way down. That’s logical since it’s all about the meaty post over at The Blog Herald these days, the road they chose to tread so to speak. The basic layout decisions is OK, but I’m having some problems with this design.

• The footer is bland and unbalanced when it comes to spacing on the top/bottom. It needs a little action and graphic love. Too clean, and that’s from me…
• I think there’s too little contrast between the columns. Spacing, changing the fonts and/or font sized, color alterations… They’re too close to each other in every aspect.
• There are some pixel issues with the menu/main content column.
• I’d like some vibrancy in the header. Going clean gray with a little red is alright, but something to give it a more three dimensial feel.

Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a step in the right direction for The Blog Herald and the type of content they’re doing these days! Brian did a nice job and I’m sure the site and design will improve during the coming days.