WPDesigner reviews Unique Blog Designs

Last week, Small Potato from WPDesigner posted a review about Nate Whitehill’s Unique Blog Designs. All the points that he made are very true. In fact, thats what i had felt about them. Even normal Wordpress Design companies do Unique designs. But, having the word “Unique” in their name, UBD doesn’t do Unique themes. Check out these sites designed by UBD :

Do you think they are Unique ? Of course, they aren’t. They are just small variations of each other. So are they worth $799 ? Definitely they aren’t. Even i’m a wordpress theme designer and i know how much custom themes are worth. I do unique custom themes from $200. But i just don’t do it like UBD because i don’t have enough free time. I just do some freelancing.

Coming back to Small Potato’s review, i’d support his review 100%. He has wrote what he had thought and there is nothing wrong in it. I don’t like the way Adii has responded in the comments. Every blogger has every right to publish anything in his blog. I experienced the same when i wrote negative reviews (here & here) on my Contest Blog.

The comments section of the post is really interesting. There is very interesting conversation between Adii and SP.

Also, as SP points out, the UBD themes are not of good quality. The are, of course, Poorly made gradients. For eg, check out Darin.cc. It reminds me of designs i used to create when i was 14 years old. Childish. To finish off, what Small Potato did is nothing wrong. And Unique Blog Designs does have to change this. They need to be unique. I wouldn’t be wasting my $800 for a copy-cat-like theme.

on Saturday, October 20th, 2007 at 9:48 am, under Design. RSS.

7 Responses to “WPDesigner reviews Unique Blog Designs”

Wallace says:
October 20, 2007 at 12:02 pm

without John Chow, he is nothing.

Matt Blancarte says:
October 20, 2007 at 10:05 pm

SP is entitled to his opinion of our designs, as are you.

I just wanted to stop by and clarify that we did not design JohnTP.com. His blog is one of many that have emulated our very popular style.

Although many designers (such as yourself) are not in tune with our work, the positive feedback that we get from clients and other people wins the argument from our point of view.

You must understand that we are not just Nate Whitehill. We have five full-time designers now (including Nate and I), and two partnerships with coding companies to ensure quality. We are in the process of hiring more designers (our designers are required to have a degree in graphic arts or a related field).

I don’t think that people have a grip on how many clients we have designed for in the past two months, and how many people come to us requesting a design with a layout/functionality similar to john chow, and some of the blogs listed above. What is great is that not all of our designs are in the same layout as john chow’s. We have done more than 10 of a simple layout (two-column)

This isn’t just Nate you’re attacking here, it’s an organization of 21 designers, coders, managers, and other staff.

Regarding our $799 price, our clients get:

-A creative survey and process that helps them articulate exactly what they are looking for.

-A design from scratch. We do not use templates for ANY of our work.

-5 major revisions, and unlimited minor revisions of the design.

-Professional Coding

-Installation and setup.

-Consultation on the features of their blog.

-After launch bug fixing.

Our clients have the last say when it comes to our designs. It is just a fact that a lot of people like the John Chow redesign, and we agree with them.

I just see a general misconception of our company that portrays us as underhanded and out of step with what people want in a blog design. All we are doing is designing for people that really like our work as much as we do. Hopefully I shed some light on what Unique Blog Designs really is. :)

Hari says:
October 21, 2007 at 2:48 am

Hi Matt,
Thanks for stopping by and letting me know. I didn’t realize JohnTP.com was not designed by you. But, now you understand why i feel that your designs were just variations. JohnTP followed a similar layout and i mistook it to be a UBD Design.

You say that many people come to you and request a design/layout similar to JohnChow. So, there must be some clients who didn’t request this. Can you link me to one or two of them ?

This post and SP’s post is not an attack on either Nate or UBD. Its just our point of view and review on your designs.

Idetrorce says:
December 15, 2007 at 1:13 pm

very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce

Dissatisfied customer says:
February 15, 2009 at 7:09 pm

I am a recent customer of Unique Blog Designs. They now charge $1600 and I have to say I am extremely disappointed. Their first mockup of a site showed that they did not follow my requests to them, and certainly did not show anything special to be worth the $1600. We are still in the implementation phase, and at this point I am disappointed and do not recommend them.
I guarantee they did the blog’s for John Chow, Jeremy Schoemaker and other big names for free in return for positive reviews.