Movalog Blog

Exactly one year ago, Elise, Jesse and I embarked on an ambitious project. Bored of the default styles, we decided that a style contest would be the best way to generate some beautiful styles for the community. It began quite small, simply a Movable Type Style Contest. However, with Six Apart's blessings and a team of their employees, we were able to expand our horizons and cater for the entire Typepad and LiveJournal communities too (and in the end I'm extremely glad we did, the participation from these two communities was fantastic!). With over 140 gorgeous styles, I certainly didn't envy the decisions the judges had to make.

Our vision of the site, however, didn't just end with a style contest. We wanted to create The Style Archive, a permanent repository of styles that would remain open to submissions. Over the summer, Jesse and I have been toiling away and along with the entire team are extremely proud to launch it today.

The Style Archive features a completely new design, launched earlier in the summer, which makes it incredibly easy to browse through the designs available and choose the perfect one for your blog. We've also gone Web 2.0 and introduced "style tagging" - designers can now tag their styles and you can easily view styles with similar tags. In the next few weeks, we're hoping to expand this such that the entire community can participate and tag styles.

Designers, there are a whole lot of new features for you. The Designer's Area is now much snappier. Uploading new styles should now take a few seconds and you will now get instant feedback if your submission fails some of the criteria. This means that you'll be able to get your styles approved much faster (and of course, it takes some of the burden off us!).

The Style Archive, like the contest before it, can only truly be a success with your participation so I encourage you to browse through the styles, comment and rate them and design your own!