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Showdown Series (Season One): Week 2
13. Jul, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in Interactive
After the resounding success of Week 1’s showdown we are quite excited about this second installment. After a good while browsing through all the wonderful showcase pieces we decided we would put two Groovy Video theme customizations head to head this week.
The Groovy Video is the mastermind of the designer Izuddin Helmi and is one of our most popular video blogging themes. The wonderful works in question today are TUT Candy and WCRIA Design Criativo. Without further ado let the battle begin.
TUT Candy – Link (Che McPherson of PixelPimps)
TUT Candy
First impression of TUT Candy is “WOW! This guy know’s his way around Photoshop”. It’s an immediate positive and memorable impression. With a neutral black design dominating the site, the eyes are immediately drawn into the colourful header banner. With the Adobe icons scattered throughout the banner and the big slogan it is evident what this site is all about – design tutorials. No need to guess or click on the about page to find out more information, which is the pitfall of a lot of other sites.
Che has used neat, eye catching imagery for each individual post. So many web authors seem to forget that it’s not only the website template that needs to be well structured and designed, but care and attention should also be given to the posts within. Che has also opted to lose the chunky, round Cooper font for the module headers on the home page and rather opted for a more web friendly sans-serif font. It works well in this design, set in a calm, light blue colour.
The only major modification that has been made to the Groovy Video template, other than the colours, imagery and typography is the dedicated 125 X 125 pixel advertising blocks below the featured post. Although most the blocks are unfilled at the moment, the site doesn’t look spammy or cheap. This space is unobtrusive, yet enticing to advertisers.
The footer space consists of logos for the other sites in Che’s network, rather than text links, which makes it more of a feature and more likely for users to interact and click on them.
The Vimeo videos/screencasts that Che has created are most informative and with the short intro animations the branding is consistent with the website design. Top notch job!
WCRIA Design Criativo – Link (Vinicius Wingnut)
WCRIA
The first impression of WCRIA is not as obvious as TUT Candy, but that is because it’s in a foreign language – please remember to take that into consideration when voting. WCRIA is a design agency based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and run by Vinicius Wingnut (cool surname, if that’s really it!). Vinicius has used the Groovy Video theme quite ingeniously as a portfolio based theme, and instead of posting videos, he has posted predominantly screenshots of his logos, websites with a couple of his video edits.
The overall website colours are a little brighter than TUT Candy with a vibrant purply pink background. The module headers on the home page have also been changed from the original Cooper font to a straighter, longer sans-serif font. I’m not quite sure this font gels as well with the shiny Web 2.0 logo font, but it certainly stands out. I’d also probably vertically align the spacing above and below the logo – currently there is a bit much of a top margin.
There are no major structural changes to the Groovy Video theme with WCRIA, apart from the single post edits to accommodate images in the featured space. When voting I encourage you to not only take the beautiful designs into consideration, but the creativity in its use.
And now to get into some voting… (Voting closes on Thursday, 16 July)
NOTICE: Thanks everyone for voting! We think this was another amazing Showdown and loved all of your comments / discussions below.
Unfortunately though there can be only one winner… We thought this one would be much closer than last week, but in the end Che McPherson’s TUT Candy takes it with a resounding 79% of the votes. So congrats to Che, who is the winner of a $50 WooThemes voucher and a Woo T-Shirt! Until next Monday…
13 July 2009 at 11:43 am #
Both are really impressive this time around. I like TUT Candy’s graphical brilliance, whilst WCRIA’s modifications to act as a portfolio as equally awesome.
Gonna be a much tighter affair this than last week’s Showdown.
13 July 2009 at 11:46 am #
Oooh, very high quality this week! TutCandy takes it for me
13 July 2009 at 11:47 am #
Hehe, from your work I can see why you’d pick the elaborate, graphical design!
13 July 2009 at 3:24 pm #
Absolutely! Totally my style
13 July 2009 at 11:49 am #
WCRIA for me. It looks much cleaner.
13 July 2009 at 11:51 am #
really hard to decide, both designs and modifications are impressive and make this theme absolutely unique. and you cant say it often enough, but this is kick ass
to be honest, i made it easy for me this time, i flipped a coin and the winner was head
13 July 2009 at 11:56 am #
Niiiice!
Tut Candy takes the gold IMO!
13 July 2009 at 11:56 am #
Both are freaking awesome. Very difficult to decide over here.
13 July 2009 at 11:58 am #
This is a tough one…
But I think Tut Candy gets my vote! (just)
13 July 2009 at 12:10 pm #
PixelPimps! Nice name!
13 July 2009 at 12:19 pm #
I dig them both but vote for clean
13 July 2009 at 12:20 pm #
I have to go with WCRIA just based on cool name.
Actually both sites are similar. Tut Candy is too graphic intensive.
13 July 2009 at 12:23 pm #
As much as Tut Candy is brilliantly designed, I’m going to go with WCRIA because of it’s simplicity.
The purple base color juxtaposed against the darker backgrounds made this one very difficult, but I still like the simple layout of WCRIA just enough to make it my choice.
13 July 2009 at 12:27 pm #
I like Tut Candy more than WCRIA. I think it’s because of the colors used by Tut Candy
13 July 2009 at 12:28 pm #
Fantastic work on both sides, look forward to seeing who comes out on top. But either way two very good designs, nice work to all involved.
13 July 2009 at 12:44 pm #
I’m going to have to vote for my boy che here on this one. Go dude!
13 July 2009 at 12:46 pm #
The TUT Candy graphics are awesome. That’s my pick for sure.
PS – I wish I’d remembered to submit, but my custom Groovy site is at http://www.handmadebicycleshow.com – it’s built around allowing exhibitors at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show to create their own profiles including portfolios of bikes they’ve built.
13 July 2009 at 1:30 pm #
Looks good Josh!
You can still submit it to the Showcase and be considered for future Showdowns.
13 July 2009 at 1:36 pm #
How do I submit my site to the Showcase?
13 July 2009 at 1:52 pm #
You can do so here: http://showcase.woothemes.com/submit/
13 July 2009 at 1:35 pm #
Both are awesome. TUT Candy wins it for me, I like the colours.
Both having a dark background hurt my eyes when I flipped back to this screen though
13 July 2009 at 5:48 pm #
TUT Candy all the way! Its uniform layout caught my eye, the other one lost me a bit. Both are great though. Good shtuff.
13 July 2009 at 5:50 pm #
woooooo hoooooooooo… im very very honored to be part of the showdown… thanks everyone for there kind comments and all the best to WCRIA
Adii you are a ROCKSTAR
13 July 2009 at 5:57 pm #
What makes me a Rockstar relevant to the Showdown?
From the design above, you’re most definitely the rockstar!
Thanks for stopping by and congrats on a really amazing design! I’d love to hear what you thought about the theme btw…
13 July 2009 at 8:18 pm #
Oh man the THEME…
Its a pretty long story… well not in words but meaning I had an idea a long while back… Ive always felt like giving back to design as I learned a lot of it the hard way…
and after every mistake Ive found myself sitting there wondering why its all happened and realized how sucky the situation was and thought from then if I can help peeps avoid the same probs I have someone wouldn’t have to go through the same dark places I have…
Anyway so from then I sorta became a bit of an evangelist against design pitfalls and in general good design practices which lead me to some lecturing at universities etc
But my dream was to always have my own blog site where i could share with the masses… The dream was something id been definitely contemplating for a long time… It would still be a dream if it wasn’t for groovy video theme.
Ive always felt I prefer learning from videos rather then reading, I think all us right brainers would be in the same boat. I always thought I would have to get such a site custom built… but the second I seen GV theme here if I could have done a back flip right then would have been the time… but I didn’t wait a second in starting to turn my dream into reality. I had a lot of self confidence issues to get over posting video tutorials as naturally Im not a good talker but I find my passion overrides any feelings of anxiety.
The thing I love about the theme although its set up for video which was my primary concern its also set up to do traditional type style posts so its really exactly what I want. The layout also was spot on so I was stoked that I only had to change cosmetic things and I had it all up and running with very little cost and even smaller effort.
My site is still very young, and content wise I have a lot planned for it but for everything now and in the future with this theme I’m well catered for. I haven’t been able to rock any new tutorials over the past few weeks due to a new addition to the family but as I just mentioned there’s plenty of stuff in the oven.
Its only just the start… woothemes is also helping another dream of mine to come true (in dev) and truthfully without the woo team none of it could have happened.
maybe it was a long story
13 July 2009 at 8:30 pm #
Long, but definitely worth the read (for me anyway). It’s always great for us as a team, to hear and see how our themes have enabled our users to pursue certain goals; albeit personal or business. So it’s truly amazing reading testimonials like this!
13 July 2009 at 6:07 pm #
One tough competition. Goodluck to both contestants.
13 July 2009 at 6:38 pm #
Tut candy!
13 July 2009 at 8:28 pm #
Both are very impressive but I must choose one.So I choose the http://tutcandy.com/ .
I think it is completely perfect in web design lay out. So I vote the http://tutcandy.com/.
13 July 2009 at 8:30 pm #
Really tough one. Vote for TUT Candy.
13 July 2009 at 9:29 pm #
My vote: WCRIA. Tut Candy is stunning, but a little OTT, graphically speaking. WCRIA is simple and stunning.
13 July 2009 at 9:57 pm #
Doesn’t make sense to me. Why on earth a guy who makes and sell creative designs would use a ready-made design for his own site?
13 July 2009 at 11:19 pm #
who me??
14 July 2009 at 1:11 am #
If you haven’t realized by now… the design is custom! He never claims to be a developer!? It’s WooThemes that takes care of the HTML/CSS & WordPress side of things. But the users makes it their own.
We empower people who don’t have the skills to get a site up and running. Then encourage them to add spark to it.
Building a site from scratch is hard. There is allot of time and effort that has to go into it. Something some people feel is crippling instead of fun.
I love TUTCandy. Nice work.
14 July 2009 at 3:27 am #
I agree, i have had mixed feeling over the years about using templates versus custom design, but especially with wordpress it takes a high level of skill to accomplish some of the amazing things the WooThemes team has done, and thank goodness they do and keep the themes so easy customize otherwise us non-wordpress rockstars would be up a creek!
14 July 2009 at 4:10 am #
tks for the back up guys…. yes definitely I quite easily could have built something from scratch, although I’m a designer, code is like Chinese to me.. but as far as the design side went yeah for sure… something from scratch would have been very easy…
Along with some kickass functionality, what I bought from woothemes in essence was time… as mentioned above my dream would have stayed a dream if woothemes didnt make it so damn easy to have my dreams off the ground low cost and within a day… rather then days… weeks.. months to get it off the ground myself.
The old saying goes a plumber always has the worse plumbing… and as designers none of us get the time we like to spend on our own projects or even portfolios (reminds me i must update that)
well I think woothemes helped me eradicate that plumber story… all I really needed to do was some cosmetic things and focus on the content which I really feel content is what sets one site apart from another… especially when we are dealing with blog type sites woo themes mainly caters for…
hehehehehe and sorry for all my long posts I promise I’ll leave you all alone now
13 July 2009 at 11:03 pm #
Difficult to decide this one. So based my descision on appropriatness of theme to it’s use and technical modifications – mainly SEO URLs.
Since WCRIA is a design studio they should know better than to not have SEO friendly urls and I’m not so sure of the appropriateness of the Groovy Theme as a company website and portfolio.
Even though TUTs makes my teeth hurt, it got +1 because it appropriately utilises the Groovy Theme features and has SEO friendly URLs.
phatoz
14 July 2009 at 2:20 am #
Both are great…
But my vote goes to Tut Candy
14 July 2009 at 3:47 am #
Voted tutcandy for 1 reason – I dont understand why a design agency (WCRIA Design Criativo) cant create their own template rather than modify someone elses
14 July 2009 at 5:45 am #
Well, I think it’s a case of not trying to be a specialist in everything. So for Che (as he mentions), the coding doesn’t come naturally and the cost-efficient option is thus to buy one of our themes and then just customize it for his needs. His site still looks awesome & showcases his design work (which is his main aim); so why would anyone be bothered about him not coding his own site?
14 July 2009 at 3:52 am #
TUT candy +1. Although both sites are quite similarily designed.
14 July 2009 at 4:35 am #
The overall website colors are a little brighter than TUT Candy with a vibrant purely pink background. The module headers on the home page have also been changed from the original Cooper font to a straighter, longer sans-serif font.
14 July 2009 at 5:19 am #
I voted for TutCandy. The header is just awesome ! *_*
14 July 2009 at 6:11 am #
I vote for original design! JK.
OK, here is my comments for each of the contestant.
Tut Candy:
1. Pink color for top nav link is bad combination I think. The color not really blend.
2. Your search background really cool!
3. I am in 1680×1050 and your navi background have a minor problem there.
4. Your header is too cool! But I can’t see “Only The Tastiest Design Tutorials” stand. Perhaps some typography fix there
5. Video caption (featured section) seems need a fix there
6. Nice color of footer-bar.
7. Color of Links for Recent Comments section seems not matching.
WCRIA:
1. I really love your semi transparent navigation links background.
2. Your logo looks really smart and clear. “Blog” icon is not nice I think.
3. Header for each section looks smart. Nice font there
4. Your background looks beautiful and I like when it touches semi-transparent new portfolio side.
5. I can’t use “Category” selection.
6. You seems forgot to change Comments color link (at your new portfolio part).
7. Footer-bar looks to normal (If I had a chance to fix the color for Woothemes, I would do it).
8. RSS icon is a lone ranger there
Basically, I love both of the design. But I like WCRIA more because of its cleanliness.
To the one who said “Doesn’t make sense to me. Why on earth a guy who makes and sell creative designs would use a ready-made design for his own site?” – I also use ready-made design
I do it because I don’t have much time on creating new design and code for myself. I think that is not a really problem there.
Thanks to Woothemes for choosing Groovy Video. Hey, I owe you a lot guys because you guys teach me something
14 July 2009 at 6:16 am #
Thanks for the candid feedback on the designs there!
14 July 2009 at 6:12 am #
Tut candy for me.
14 July 2009 at 6:15 am #
There’s just too much going on. Sadly, I don’t like any of them. They would be good inspiration for a diet, though.
14 July 2009 at 9:38 am #
Congrats to both sites for making it into the challenge. Gotta give my vote to my main man Che. Definitely an awesome and inspirational site.
14 July 2009 at 9:40 am #
Both themes look great! Even the original Groovy theme without mods looks great. But TUT Candy hits the spot for me.
15 July 2009 at 9:04 am #
Very very good both websites, but I do prefer TUT Candy.
16 July 2009 at 12:20 am #
Hello!
I am very proud and surprised to see a review of my blog here on WooThemes. I never thought that a patch for my official site would sure like that.
Was without any time to finish the site of my design agency, WCRIA Design Criativo, and therefore had the idea to customize a template and make a blog where I had an option to put some fast my work. It was thought that the theme Groovy Video, stunning and thought some changes and decided to put it in the air.
Just to know that the work has been recognized is of great size for me! I thank all who voted in the WCRIA Design Criativo even more.
(In a brief version of WooTube will be launched by WCRIA, a version and creative and original. And sorry for bad english, I’m trying to improve this with some lessons!)
16 July 2009 at 1:36 am #
Thanks for stopping by, as well as the kind words Vinicius! And good luck in the Showdown!
Only a few hours left for voting…
16 July 2009 at 6:18 pm #
wooo hoooooooooooooo super slap high fives all round…
HUGE tks woo team and props to WRCIA
25 July 2009 at 9:19 am #
The only major modification that has been made to the Groovy Video template, other than the colours, imagery and typography is the dedicated 125 X 125 pixel advertising blocks below the featured post.