free_wordpress_design.gifBrian Purkiss over at Plainbeta is conducting a contest wherein the winner will receive a free custom wordpress design, and I would like to help him promote it. He seems like a talented designer, and you really have nothing to lose since it would be FREE! If you’re interested, you should check out his site, as I believe he just revamped it. I suggest anyone who is in need of a new theme join this contest.

To enter the contest, you have to follow these simple instructions:

1: Write a post on your blog linking to HIS post “selling” your blog to him.

2: Answer the following questions in that post:
-Why should he pick your blog?
-What do you want the design to look like? (If you’re not sure, that’s fine. He’ll be happy to help you come up with a design)
-Remember, he has to like your blog in order to pick it. So what’s so special about it?

3: Contact him with a link to your entry.

For more information, you should visit the post.

I think this can be a great opportunity for new bloggers or even veteran bloggers who are still using a wordpress theme that they found for free on the internet. There can be a steep learning curve in designing your own site, and most people don’t have the time to start learning. This could give you a good chance to bypass all of that so you can focus on other stuff like creating superb content. Theres already too much that needs to be done in starting your own blog, and designing your own blog is something that can take up way too much time. Good luck!

Even though we will probably be designing our own blog internally, I will answer the required questions anyways.

Why should I pick your blog?
Brian, you should pick this blog because it’s up and coming and starting to attract a bunch of new visitors. This blog is dedicated mostly to Matlab, an engineering analysis tool, and will require a special format to deal with all the tutorials that we write. We want our tutorials to stand out from the rest of the pack, so this will surely be a challenge to your design skills.

What do you want the design to look like?
We’re not sure what we want it to look like, and if we did, I have a feeling the design would be complete already!

What’s so special about our blog?
Unlike most blogs, we focus on writing tutorials. We supplement our tutorials with some posts here and there. I wouldn’t say that we are special, but we do not fall into the norm of most blogs. We have carved out a niche as a Matlab blog, which is somewhat rare at the moment.

Hopefully this helps get the word out. Good luck Brian!